Queen of Hearts
by ACleverName
Summary: Sequel to Butcher, Baker, Tailor. What will lure Cecile Blandine, tailor's daughter, to Gotham? And why won't the Joker leave her alone?
1. Chapter 1

**Queen of Hearts**

"_The Joker has zero empathy." –Heath Ledger_

"_He doesn't care about himself at all." –Lindy Hemming_

**A/N: **So here it is. And sorry it took so bloody long. "Butcher, Baker, Tailor" was meant as a simple, fable-like, symmetrical, self-contained entity in three parts. The sequel ballooned out of proportion—now it's like a graphic novel in prose, with multiple points of view (I try never to use more than one point of view in a single story, so I broke all of my own rules here). There's a cast of, well, if not thousands, more than I normally write, and I've never killed so many people on the page in my life. It's brutal, and a strange feeling having the power over your creations that they can murder each other in back alleys over trifles. You have the power to snuff out the lives of your characters. I don't show graphic violence in most of my work, so this is a real departure. I also ended up writing for many of the Bat-verse regulars, which I was leery about, but it was nonetheless an interesting exercise.

Sorry, Kendra, I know you wanted this to be Jokachel, and I did try, and it did start out that way. There are hints of that, but that would be telling. Some readers said Cécile was good enough for a standalone character, others did not agree. We'll see what happens as there are long stretches of this where the Joker isn't even around.

Thank you to Kendra Luehr and KatxValentine for their help and support. An extra-special thanks goes to Lunachick35 who read the entirety of this fic and beta-ed her butt off in helping me get it into tip-top shape. A round of applause for her, ladies and gentlemen. Fifty-six pages and 28,300 words later . . . We pick up immediately after "Butcher, Baker, Tailor" left off. Here—we—go.

I.

Marie-Cécile Blandine rubbed the back of her neck, bruised and sore. She was kneeling on the floor of Duplessis' bakery in the rue St. Denis, right where _he _had left her. The bell at the door dinged, and Duplessis himself stumbled onto the floor next to her. "Cécile, Cécile!" the overweight baker panted, crawling toward her. He looked up, sniffing the air like a rat, sweat pouring over his large upper lip. The bakery swirled with the smell of fresh bread, and the cold, stale air from outside. It had begun to snow. "Where is he?"

Cécile got unsteadily to her feet. She kept her eyes on the floor, on the stack of American dollars lying there amidst the trash and the dead autumn leaves. "I don't know, Duplessis," she murmured.

The French poured forth from the excitable baker. "_La vache! _What has he done? What has he done?" He moved as quickly as his bulk allowed toward the counter, where he stepped in the remains of a chocolate éclair.

Cécile rubbed her neck. "He didn't steal anything." It was as if she was realizing it at the same moment. He'd drawn a knife on her, he'd threatened to burn her face with a cigarette, he'd trashed the bakery, but the Joker was gone. For the last time.

"He made me call you," said Duplessis, picking up the white baker's hat at his feet. "First he drove the customers out, then he dragged me to the phone, then threw me out . . . there's no excuse! I'm surprised he didn't bomb it. I'm going to call the police right now. I don't care if he isn't Canadian, he's going to Canadian prison . . ."

"Just . . . shut up!" Cécile snapped. Her head was aching.

Duplessis stared at her. "What's wrong with you, _hein_? Don't you see what your friend did to my shop?"

Cécile lashed out at him. "He's not my friend!" She bent surreptitiously to pick up the American dollars in a handkerchief—the American dollars she'd shunned and swore to him she'd spit on. "I'm gonna go, okay?"

"What's that?" Duplessis asked, looking at the handkerchief.

"Nothing," said Cécile. "Call the police if you want . . ." She hadn't even the energy to finish her thought. She gave a half-hearted wave and left, Duplessis staring at her with distrust.

"Papa!" Cécile was trembling, the stolen money deep in the pocket of her skirt. "Papa! You won't believe . . ." What was she going to tell him? What was she going to tell the _police_ if Duplessis made good with his threat? That her father had catered to an absolute _cafard _because he felt a sense of moral equanimity? Would they want to look through the books? What if he'd done more than robbed banks, terrorized people? What if he'd killed?

"Papa!" Cécile cried. She moved quickly through the workshop, to her father's bedroom. Where was he? He'd been taking a nap when she'd gotten the phone call. The bed was rumpled, unmade. She moved to the bathroom and knocked on the closed door. "Papa!" Snow hit the windows outside with a sickening slush. Somewhere an ambulance _pinponpinponpinpon_ned across traffic. "Papa, it's your daughter," said Cécile, her throat closing up in exhaustion. "I know you can't say anything, so just flush the toilet or something to let me know you're in there."

There was silence, and for a prickly moment Cécile considered the possibility that her father had gone somewhere. She had no idea where he had gone—had he been kidnapped, then? "Oh, who wants an old, mute tailor anyway?" She hammered on the door. He wasn't really that old. He was not even sixty. She shoved her narrow shoulder into the door. It gave way.

Bernard Blandine was leaned against the far corner of the bathroom, stiff as bombazine. Cécile repressed a cry. Was this a joke? Had someone replaced her father with a mannequin? She touched him. He was still warm. And very, very dead.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

The Greyhound bus stop on the border of Canada and upstate New York had seen better days. In the frozen depths of hardest winter anyone on either side of the border had known for decades, it was cold and forbidding the hour before midnight. Tony Dupré's parka was zipped, and his mother had bundled him up in a long woollen scarf. The bus shelter was covered and connected to the rest of the station by a murky tunnel, giving it the semblance of warmth and insulation. But that didn't stop Tony's mother from declaring it a "death trap!" She had her cell phone in her ear and kept dialling up Tony's aunt in New York City. He thought she must be getting a busy signal, but he'd never seen his mother this frantic before. The bus left for the city at 11:45 p.m., and Tony—hyper on Mountain Dew and fun-sized Snickers bars—was almost having fun. It was the most adventure he'd had since his mom had moved them to Canada.

"Tony, stay close." His mom's voice was brittle. She was scared of the dark, he thought, even though there was plenty of light right under the bus shelter, enough to read his comic book by anyway.

"Mom, _I'm fine,_" he said for the tenth time.

His mom had red nail polish, but she'd bitten most of her nails to the quick. The ends of her fingers looked like they were bleeding, or covered in red wax that was dripping. She bent down to him, eyes round like a cartoon's. "Tony, honey, I don't have a signal in here." She took his face in her hand. "I'm going to try outside, okay? I want you to come with me."

She reached for his hand, and he pulled away as only a petulant nine-year-old could. "Mom! I'm not going out there!"

"Oh, yes, you are! I'm not going to—"

He shook away from her. "I'm going to sit here, and read my comic book, and if you make me go out there, I'll report you for child abuse!"

There was the soft sound of a chuckle from outside the dingy tunnel. Tony's mom didn't seem to notice; her eyes were filling with tears and she was biting the ends of her nails again. Tony was about to apologize when she swept off toward the door to the shelter. She held up a palm. "Five minutes. You behave yourself for five minutes, I'll be right back, and if anything happens to you . . ."

"Mooooom . . ."

Tony opened up his comic book to page 12 where he had left off and started reading, stifling a yawn. A shadow passed in front of the dim light bulb by which he was reading, and he looked up. A large shape had covered the doorway that led out to the bus, where his mother was calling. Tony squinted. It looked like a big man in a dark coat. "Excuse me, sir, do you want to come in? It's cold out, and there's plenty of room in here."

The man turned, and all Tony could see at first was a painted-on face. There was a big gash where a smile should have been. Still, Tony figured, clowns had bad days, too. Maybe this guy had gotten separated from his circus troupe and was stuck, trying to catch up with them. That would make anyone's makeup run.

"Awww," said the clown, in an odd, nasal, grating voice. "How sweet." He moved toward Tony. "You're not here on your own, are you, kid?" As he moved closer, Tony could see he was wearing a purple coat and a green tie, and it looked crisp and new. He had been expecting polka dots.

"No," said Tony. "My mom's out there on her cell phone. Didn't you see her?"

The clown took a few steps closer and waggled a purple-gloved finger in front of Tony. "I don't know about your mooooom, but didn't she teach you not to talk to strangers?" He made a "move over" gesture at Tony and scooted down to sit next to him. "What're you reading there, buckaroo?"

Tony held out the comic book, though he moved over slightly. The clown had a weird smell, not cotton candy and bubblegum, something Tony didn't like. "It's a _Batman _comic."

"Oh, reeeeeeally?" The clown snatched the comic away from Tony and held it up close to his face, leering through the garishly-inked pages. It was like sulphur, Tony thought, rotten eggs? Gun powder?

"He's my favorite," said Tony, looking over his shoulder to see if his mom was coming in, or if the bus had arrived.

"Mine too," said the clown, lips curling upward in something between a grin and a sneer. "I'm his biggest fan." Giving the comic a final once-over, the clown threw it back to Tony and got up again. He started tapping his wristwatch with a finger, irritably, before ducking out the front of the shelter and back again. He rubbed his gloved hands together, moving from one foot to the other, like a marionette being jerked about on strings. "The bus is, uh, late."

Tony yawned again and looked at his own watch. "Yeah. I hope I don't have to wait too much longer. My mom—"

"You know, you're not really that irritating," said the clown. "You _could _be one of these modern punks with their iPods up their asses all the time. You could be talking back, face all a-smirk." Tony stared, eyebrows stitched together. "No, you're not bad. For a stunted whelp."

Tony shrugged. "A what?" The clown was cradling something now in his hands, something that flashed silver in the dull light bulb. Was he going to do a magic trick?

"Shhhhhh!" snapped the clown, holding up a hand to his lips. "I think I hear our bus coming."

"Really?" asked Tony, getting to his feet and stuffing the comic into his backpack. He ran to the front of the bus shelter and stood beside the clown, shielding his eyes as the searing white light of the Greyhound signalled its arrival.

"Oh, and little boy," said the clown, his voice stretched thin, "you can tell your mother not to worry—we aren't going to be late anymore."

"Gee, how do you know that?"

Tony's eyes had adjusted to the light, and he saw now that the Greyhound's driver was wearing a cheap, plastic clown mask. The man in purple at his side gave a wheezing, sinister, hacking chuckle. " 'Cause _I'm _driving! Remember to wear your seatbelt!"

Marie- Cécile sat at the window, her Bible open on her lap, candles lit. She tried to pray. She moved her lips like Ruth, but nothing came out. Nothing at all. She was blind, even though her eyes were open. She was cold, even though she was wearing her coat indoors. It would take weeks to get the death certificate. Settling the estate. They would try to contact her long-lost brother. She was the executor of the will. The shop was hers. The house was hers . . .

A heart attack. She'd been through his medicine cabinet, she'd been with him to the doctor's before, as a matter of necessity. No one talked about the drinking; she'd always thought it would be his liver that got to him first. He couldn't speak, so she never left his side. His interpreter. It was as if she'd been separated from her shadow. But that wasn't quite true, either. You needed sunlight to see your shadow; you never saw your shadow in the dark. But she was always with him in the dark, in the daylight, by moon, by cloud, rain, wind, fog. Year after year after year . . .

She hurled the Bible against the wall and screamed. She couldn't keep speaking to herself in her own head. But there wasn't anyone else. She had no friends, no living relatives. She had never before seen how empty her life was. What had the Joker said? "Boring, asthmatic life"? She stared at the wad of American bills on the dresser. She wasn't childish enough to think of it as tainted money, but she couldn't stop looking, couldn't stop thinking. Where was he now? "He would have laughed," she said softly, lighting herself a cigarette. "He would have said, 'I told you so.'"

So what? Who cared what he would have said, what he would have done? He was insane and dangerous and loathsome. He didn't give a toss about the sanctity of human life. He didn't understand loss. Why were her thoughts dwelling with some crazy who insisted on wearing a purple suit, instead of on the practicalities, the aching, pitiful realities, of preparing for her father's funeral, of living life without him?

She looked at her cigarette. "I could burn the house down," she thought. A day before, she had been so eager to burn a set of clothes that represented all she despised. What she despised and was fascinating, actually, and that's why she wanted to burn them. She stared at the cigarette in her hand, then puffed on it meditatively. "I'm going to get through this," she said with a shudder. The tears she had been hiding from everyone slowly jetted out of her eyes. She squeezed her arms in a hug around her torso, the bony forearms meeting the tight cage of her ribs, the heel of her hand digging into her belly. The scars there that no one knew about. The baby she'd never had.


	3. Chapter 3

III.

Cécile sat in the workshop. She revved up the old HP computer. She waited for it to boot. She stared at the outline of her pale, anemic face in the black screen of the computer monitor. Nothing happened. She waited.

Cécile moved uncertainly through the showroom on the floor of PC World. She'd never shopped for a computer before. A businessman, client of her father, had selected and given to them the dinosaur they'd been using until it had died. Just like her father. She shook her head, a crooked smile on her face. She couldn't think like that.

What was RAM and what was ROM again? She stared at price tags, at spec sheets, at the smiling people, who were glad to be inside and away from the winter weather. The store smelled like packing peanuts and hot coffee. "Madame?" She spun around. In front of her in the black polo shirt uniform of PC World was a man. Cécile decided at once that he was young, younger than her. He had dark, short hair, and round, black studs in both ears. His cheap, gold-trimmed name tag said "Luc." "Can I help you at all?"

"I'm looking for a new desktop computer," she said, staring into his eyes, so dark they were almost black. She thought the area below his lower lip was pierced, but there was no earring. "I don't know much about computers . . ."

She realized that not only was she staring at him, he was staring back at her. He was smiling. It had been a long time since a man had smiled at her. She was annoyed, flustered, and reeling from the stab of pleasure she felt all at once. "Is this for a home office?" he asked. He had a pleasant, rich-toned voice, perhaps from Montréal.

"Um, yes," said Cécile. "I need it for internet, primarily. We were on dial up, at home, but now I'm thinking of going to—"

"Dial up? Look who's still living in the Dark Ages." Luc the salesman laughed, and Cécile flushed in embarrassment. "Um, sorry, I didn't mean—"

"Look—just sell me a damn computer, okay?" Cécile sucked in a breath, wishing she was smoking a cigarette.

"My pleasure," said Luc, holding up his hands, as if to fend off a blow or welcome her, she wasn't sure. At the cash register, Cécile noticed how the store had cleared out. The fluorescent lights were leaving her light-headed, and the clock said it was, impossibly, nine o'clock at night. Had she been listening to the Montréal salesman, with his pleasant dark eyes and the plugs of plastic in his ears, all this time? Or was she just going crazy?

The register totalled up the multi-digit purchase, something Cécile never would have been able to afford. Before. "Here, I've got cash." She handed the Canadian dollars crisply to Luc, trying not to be amused by the surprised look on his face.

"You must have just inherited some fortune," he said, with a smile that was meant to be flirtatious.

Cécile felt a chill. That was what the man at the bank had said—was it inherited from her father's estate? What _was _she doing with a handbag full of American money that she needed exchanged? She'd almost winced and lost her nerve as it had gone into her account. She'd wanted to confess it all. She had loved her father, but she had hated him. She was chained to a life she didn't want to live, but was too frightened to do anything else. She'd been given the money by a criminal clown from down south?

"Sorry," said Luc the computer salesman. He was printing up her receipt. "Did I say something wrong?"

"It's just—" Why was she telling him this? "My father just died."

"Oh." He ran a hand convulsively through his thick black hair. "I'm sorry."

She shrugged. What did she say in response? "Thank you"? "You don't even know me, how can you possibly understand what I feel"? She skewered him with her glance. His black-dyed denim jeans were creased; she expected he'd never worn a pressed suit like her father had made in his life. She wanted to laugh at his helpful, worried little-boy face, the small puncture at the base of his lip, at herself for thinking even for a moment she had correctly read such a person . . .

"Can I help you take the computer to your car?" He had handed her the receipt. She had taken her change, cramming the dollars into the pale peach of her purse. She shook her head. "_Bien. _Can I help you set it up once you get it home?" She looked up, raising one eyebrow. His smile was effortless, genuine. "I can set you up on Google, I can get the Ethernet cable connected. No strings attached. Heh."

Cécile felt she hadn't smiled properly in years. "No, that's okay." She found a scrap of paper in her purse—a receipt for wine, that her father had bought—and scribbled down her cell phone number. She shook all over. "You _can _take this, though."

The mirror tacked onto the medicine cabinet had a dent in its upper right-hand corner. "Well, when you're in the bedroom of a cheap-ass, what can you realistically expect?" The Joker flicked on the fluorescent bulb. He opened the medicine cabinet and began tossing out bottles of hair spray and face cream, Neutrogena and Noxema and Nair. The Joker gave a quizzical look to the skinny, diminutive man tied up and gagged with duct tape on the grey carpet. "What, all this crap and no Moonbeam foundation?" He tossed a tub of Carmex at the gagged man who didn't react. "No Electric Black mascara and eyeshadow? No Sour Green Apple hair dye?"

The Joker reached into a black camera bag at his feet and pulled out a box of green hair dye with its ingredients in French. "Fortunately, I brought my own!" As he laid out pots of label-less cosmetics on the sink, the figure on the carpet made a feeble murmur. The Joker made a shhh-ing motion at him and then carefully removed his purple gloves. His hands were pale and grimy, his thumb pink and white as he ran the sharp edge of a razor over it. The duct-taped man whimpered and shook in his bonds. "Don't wet the carpet!" the Joker shouted. "This isn't for you."

He looked back in the mirror and ran the blade gently across his naked scars. "You're actually quite privileged. Not many people get to see me like this." He stroked the scars with his tongue. "Lots of people think I'm ashamed of them, that I wear all this to cover them up." He reached down and found a bottle of shaving cream in the midst of the rubble. "There was this girl, this bony French girl. Her father made me this suit, y'know." He rubbed the lather in his hands and smoothed it over his chin. "She wasn't scared of the scarrrrrs. She knew what they were about."

He raised the razor and winked at the reflection of the prisoner on the floor. "This isn't easy, either." He shaved carefully around the puffy lacerations, making a strange sucking noise as he drew them in. "I'm very good at holding a knife steady!" He laughed uproariously. "Ha, ha, ha-ho-hee." He unscrewed the cap of a white tub and smeared white paint on his face. "Did you ever read any Shakespeare? No, didn't think so. He knew all about Death painting itself." He reached into another bottle and daubed his eyes in black. "It's just too bad," he said, "that Cécile had to go and lose her temper." He scraped a tube of red across his cheeks and mashed the bits of paint into the crevices of his scars. "Where the hell am I going to get good makeup remover now?"

Cécile had one eye on the Google home page and one on her cell phone. She hadn't even needed a cell phone until her father's death. They had always used their landline, and living in the world she had since girlhood, the kind of empty fairy-realm, she'd never even considered getting one. But the funeral arrangements, the slow measures she was taking to sell the house, the liquidation of the Blandine business, required catapulting her into the twenty-first century. Luc had been right to laugh.

"Design colleges" she typed into the search engine. Impressed with the number of hits, and a little overwhelmed, she dived into the kitchen for a glass of wine. The house had always been quiet, even when her father had been alive, for obvious reasons. Now she stilled her own panic and fear in the well-steeped silence. The first night without snow in weeks. What was it Luc had told her? She needed to narrow her search parameters. He was young, and handsome, this boy, and he belonged to a world she had left years before. The land of the living. She barked out a short, startled laugh and squeezed the stem of her wine glass.

She _didn't _want to go to University in Québec. Her English was good enough for Toronto, or New York City. She tried to imagine herself, pale-skinned, lank-haired Cécile Blandine, in sunny southern California. No. Then where? She'd never been out of Canada before. Something the Joker said teased her memory. "Can't keep Gotham waiting," he'd said. She held her breath and typed in "Gotham design colleges." The first hit was the Waterman Institute of Art and Design located in downtown Gotham. She clicked on the link that listed tuition. The computer hummed as she digested her shock. Why was it so low? She heard herself laughing aloud, a sharp, discordant sound. Probably because downtown Gotham was so dangerous.

**A/N: **Luc began as a character named Iestyn in the first comic I ever wrote/drew. He was Welsh, dark-haired, wore eyeliner and had pierced ears. I thought he was the coolest and was sad when my editor told me I needed to get rid of that storyline. Iestyn lives!

Would the Joker really invoke Shakespeare? Maybe if he's as well-read as in **Saviors and Hellion Smiles.**


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed, and thanks again to Lunachick35 for her beta-ing abilities.

IV.

Someone on the TV was relating statistics about drunk driving and car accidents in the Gotham metropolitan area. The voice was droning, gratingly feminine. A turquoise and maroon patterned argyle sock hit the fuzzy screen.

"Hey, boss," muttered a nervous voice from a sweaty black hoodie, "why ya doin' that? I can't see the picture."

"Um, expressing distaste, you moron," snarled the Joker, though he allowed the nimble, shaking black hoodie to remove the sock and turn up the volume. "See, this is what's sick," he volunteered, smacking his lips. "We're not even _in _the Gotham metropolitan area, and it's blah-blah-blah, Gotham-this, Gotham-that."

Black Hoodie and a pair of assorted other unsavories, in jeans and sweats, with shaved heads and tattoos, tittered nervously. The warehouse hideout was furnished sparsely, a mass of shaggy brown carpet, dismal overhanging lights, and the single TV with its blaring female voice. The Joker seemed to tire of the jumpy crooks and let them gather around the TV. He kept to the fold out chair among a pile of hand-made detonators, explosives, and blueprints, printed off the internet and laid out neatly on the brown shaggy carpet.

"Hmm," he murmured, dipping his gloved fingers into the gash in the shoulder of his purple coat. He gently pulled the coat off his shoulders, ignoring the curious looks from the criminals not watching the TV. He carefully fingered the threads on the sleeve. "He must have been rushing," he muttered.

"Who, boss?"

"My tailor. I just got this suit a few weeks ago. Normally he's a real class-act. Tongue cut out, mute, but y'know, he did good work." The Joker poked a finger through the hole and wiggled it. "He's dead now, can't take the suit back." He smacked his lips, licking the corners of his mouth messily.

"So, get another one." Black Hoodie dared to give a small laugh.

The Joker hummed as he rummaged around in a metal tin, tossing out spools of thread and pin cushions. He triumphantly lifted out a staple gun and held it up toward Black Hoodie. "I know what people say about this suit." He fingered his tie with his free hand. "But I wantcha to know, it's not cheap. I've _tried _dropping hints to Cécile that maybe she could pick up where her father left off, but she's just not getting the message." He tapped his forehead frenetically, sauntering over to where Black Hoodie stood, nervously shifting in his cowboy boots. He rushed forward and pressed the staple gun to Black Hoodie's forehead and pressed. "So don't ever call the suit cheap, okay?"

Black Hoodie was led off bleeding and screaming. "Turn it up!" shouted the Joker. Trembling, one of the other gang members rushed forward to hit the volume button until the TV fairly shrieked. " . . . rumors of late have lauded the city's masked vigilante Batman—"

The Joker cackled long and low from the other side of the room.

"—for the lower crime rates as released by the Statistics Bureau in the last year . . ." Onscreen, shaky cell phone camera footage showed the cape and the cowl and the spiky silhouette of Batman running and then jumping into an enormous black tank-like vehicle. The Joker had threaded a needle and was sawing into the shoulder of his coat, drawing the sides of the rip together with shaking fingers.

"You really hate the Batman, don't you?" asked a young skinhead with silver teeth.

"Hate him?" the Joker mewled, pressing a gloved hand to his heart. "Oh, no." He was interrupted from further reflection by the reporter on TV. ". . . including Gotham's newest District Attorney, Harvey Dent . . ." Harvey Dent, blonde, beautiful, and neat, spoke fluidly, with a sincere smile, and nodded to Rachel Dawes on his right. "We-ell," said the Joker, putting down the needle. "Would you look what the Bat dragged in?" He gave a long, low wolf whistle that shocked the gang members, though eventually some of them joined in and laughed. "Err-ruggh!" the Joker grunted, tearing off the thread with his teeth.

Cécile held herself erect as if she was bitterly cold. In fact, the interior of Le Musée, a bar and club in the middle of downtown Trois-Rivières, was boiling. Luc would have said she looked like a cat ready to pounce, but she knew she was too angular, too full of elbows and the spike of her sharp nose, to ever be anything _but _Cécile. He'd told her where to meet him, and though she had passed by this neo-Romanesque building hundreds of times, she'd never expected to be going in. The music, which she couldn't identify, pounded on drums and metal bolts. How could Luc listen to this?

"Cécile." She felt herself standing and moving toward the voice, receiving the three kisses on her cheeks—_faire des bises_—but at the same time she wasn't quite sure what she was looking at.

"Luc?" she asked. It was beyond just the studs in his ears and the rhinestone in his lower lip. He was wearing eyeliner.

"What?" he laughed, sitting down opposite her at the bar, though she stood stiffly like a giraffe. "Haven't you ever seen a boy in makeup?"

Cécile moved slowly back to her chair. "Well . . ."

Luc frowned. "You don't like it."

Cécile felt herself flushing. "That's not it at all . . ."

Luc leaned in to her. "You do like it, then?"

"I know all about it. I even have makeup remover if you want it."

Luc winced, as though something she'd said had scratched at him, but he gulped his wine. Cécile didn't really dance, but later in the night she let him hold her close on the dance floor.

"I haven't ever," she breathed, half-aware a giggle was forming in her throat, "kissed a man with a hole in his lip."

"There's always a first time," said Luc, grinning from between his teeth. He slid an arm around her waist, then lower. She let him kiss her. She let his mouth move across her lean cheekbones, to her ears. She let him hold her closely, crushing her against him—he was so young, so young. She felt the color draining from her face and was glad the darkness in the club obscured her. She placed a gentle hand in the middle of Luc's chest and pushed him a few steps backward. "Come on," he laughed softly. "We are not children . . ."

"Well, I know I'm not," said Cécile, horrified with her bluntness. And yet part of her rejoiced in having both literally and symbolically pushed him away. _No one can get close, _part of her whispered. _I'll only let him down . . . _

"_Bien_," said Luc, his voice slightly high-pitched. "I guess I'll go home. If you'd rather have the whole green hair thing . . ."

"What?" Cécile was laughing along with him until she saw him grin and then leave that smile with a tremor. She grabbed him by the shirt front and pushed him outside with her into the alleyway behind the club. It smelled of urine and gasoline. "What?" she repeated.

"We do have TV in Québec," said Luc sullenly. "And I can read, despite what you might think."

Cécile reached for her pack of cigarettes. "W-what?"

"The bakery. I knew who you were before you walked into PC World 'cause I'd seen you before."

Cécile held out her hand impatiently for the lighter. "I still don't know what the hell—"

"I saw him run out of the bakery," said Luc, handing over the lighter. "Your friend. The Joker."

"Why do people keep _saying _that? He's not my friend!"

"Okay, then, your lover." Luc's face held a crooked smile.

"You make me sick," said Cécile, flushing violently.

Luc stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. Cécile lit her cigarette. The music of the club was still banging and echoing in the cold, dark road. "I was passing in the street," said Luc with a sigh. "I used to walk that way all the time. Our eyes probably met someday if you were staring out the window ever of your father's shop, and my eyes staring in. And out flies this madman in purple and green, grabs another passerby by the collar. Just someone on his way into the bakery." Luc rubbed the piercing in his lower lip with his nicotine-stained fingers. "Not prepared for what he's got coming."

"Which was . . .?"

"The Joker—doing that thing, with his tongue."

"Yes," said Cécile thinly.

"He says—and he's American, obviously—'Ah, a hostage.' He doesn't see me—or maybe he does, maybe it's the thrill of the chase—calling the police on my mobile." Luc sighed. "I didn't have the guts to stick around and watch. I called the police, that was my contribution. Which is more than you did." Cécile glared at him. "But while I was there, frantically dialling, I heard him muttering to himself, about his tailor, and about a bat, and about being sorry to leave behind Murray-Cécile, his little blind doll-face."

Cécile winced. "Doll-face? He's out of his mind. Luc, I gave him hair dye and decks of cards. My father made him suits. He paid, we didn't ask questions. I'm sure that seems unethical to you—"

"I wouldn't blame you if you thought he was . . . attractive, in a dangerous way."

Luc dropped his shoulders, looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "You don't have to be jealous of some freakish thief and God knows what else."

Luc took her hand and warmed it in his sweaty palm. "I wouldn't have to be jealous if you'd let me take you home."

Cécile let him hold her hand, but she crossed her fingers behind her back. She wasn't going to say that she'd taken the American money the Joker had given her, that she'd taken it to the bank and then used it to meet Luc in the first place. She wasn't going to mention Gotham and why she'd done the Google search. Luc had let himself be kidnapped; Cécile had let the Joker escape the bakery and refused Duplessis' pleas for information. They were both lying, of course, to themselves and to each other. It was hardly the basis of a good relationship. But Cécile didn't consider anything in her life "good." She lived through levels of acceptable and the slightly aberrant. She didn't know any other way and, at heart, she didn't think Luc did either.

"We go to my place," she said.


	5. Chapter 5

V.

Cécile had not entered her father's workshop after she had cleared it of the half-finished suits he had left behind. Once she had decided conclusively to give up the Blandine business, once she had made the phone calls and sent the e-mails and attuned to the possibility that Luc _was _going to be hanging around, whether she let him into her bedroom or not, she had begun to leave that part of her life in the shadow. But then, reasonably enough, the Waterman Institute of Art and Design had asked for a portfolio in her application. Sketches, swatches of cloth. Cécile wondered wryly if the competition was really that fierce—it _was _the inner-city, though she had become fond of its look on website and through the leaflets they sent in the mail—but she was determined to do her best. For once in her life, she thought, let this be meaningful.

Most of the sketches were her father's. She knew that in looking for the archival paper, the colored pencils, the HB .03 lead and the crow quill pen sets and India ink, she was going to run across her father. And the memories would be good ones, rather than the ones that had been surfacing more and more in the months after his death. She would remember his passion at designing suits, his skill at the sewing machine, his dexterity, his creativity. She had always wondered if she'd inherited any of that genius, that knack for knowing what looked good, or if all she'd gotten was experience threading needles and cutting fabrics. She was going to find out.

At the bottom of a cardboard box was a small swatch of purple fabric. To anyone else, it wasn't worth scavenging. It could have been from the lining of a wool raincoat or a theatrical costume for amateur theatre. But she knew the coat it came from so very well.

The doorbell rang, and with a sigh, Cécile stuffed the sketches and swatches under her arm and went to answer. Luc never rang the doorbell, he usually didn't even bother to knock. It had to be another acquaintance of her father's, tardily paying his respects, curious to see the specimen of the daughter, how she was coping. She threw the pile of relics on the chair nearest the door and turned the handle.

It _had _to be Luc, thought Cécile, clearing her throat in irritation, because whoever had rung the doorbell had disappeared. There weren't even footsteps receding through the rue St. Denis. She had led Luc into her bed, the night they'd gone to the club, but they hadn't consummated anything. His hands dipping below the waistband of her jeans spooked her; she couldn't let anyone see the scars there, the scars the Joker had somehow guessed were there. So Luc had left unsatisfied and, she reflected, kept on coming back.

She shrugged and bent to pick up the large mailing envelope left on the doorstep. Luc _was _the romantic type, no matter how many piercings he had, but not even he would have dared leave roses for her. What was the point? she wondered. There wasn't any identifying mark on the padded envelope, not an address, not even a handwriting sample. She pulled the cord and tore through the slightly soggy cardboard paper.

A series of postcards and newspaper clippings fell into her lap. She had to slam the door shut as a huge blast of wind threatened to take the curious package away from her and into the street. She leaned against the door, a cold sweat developing at her brow. She picked up the topmost clipping, immaculately cut from a newspaper with the precision of a razor blade. She shivered as she read the headline: **No clue to hijackers' motive in Greyhound bus attack. **The article was short, and Cécile skimmed it with ease and a slowly mounting sense of nausea. A Greyhound bus had been stolen from a depot in Watertown, New York, apparently hijacked by an armed gang. It had disappeared, only to be found abandoned in the suburbs of Gotham. There was no sign of the hijackers, and only the testimony of a very scared little boy. "It was a gang of clowns," the boy asserted to the police and the paper. The boy's comic had been taken but he was returned otherwise unharmed to his traumatized mother.

The very reason for its being clipped for her left Cécile in doubt as to who the head clown had been. She knew that the Joker robbed banks—or at least he hadn't denied it—but for what reason could he have hijacked a Greyhound bus? She picked up the next object in the pack, and to her surprise she found it was a sheet of thin paper, torn from a magazine. It had an illustration on it, garishly reproduced and poor in quality. It depicted some sort of man's figure wearing a cap and cowl and stood in some absurd action pose. Cécile tried to think what on earth the Joker was trying to get at by including this with the chronicle of his own crimes. It was a clue she had somehow failed to unravel.

The next clipping in the pile was similarly cut with a razor blade from a newspaper. It said **Apartment tenant held hostage for 16 hours. **Cécile read on, seeing that this article was reported from an apartment complex on the outskirts of Gotham city, some godforsaken flea-pit by the description in the article. Why would the Joker want to hold a drug dealer hostage? Part of her wondered why the man, duct-taped and left with the relics of a smile painted on his face, was still alive by the end of the article. Somehow she couldn't see the Joker sparing anyone—_though he spared you, _said a voice in her head. Certainly the hostage had gone to a psychiatric ward and wouldn't be able to identify his attacker if he tried.

There were words in the article underlined in green pen. "Makeup" and "face cream" and "ruin." There was a sad face drawn on the last line of the article, a sad clown-face in green, radioactive around the words, "The assailant, calling himself 'the Joker,' was forced to flee the premises and leave a bottle of green hair dye behind." Cécile tried not to smile at the last observation, but against all reason, she did better than that—she laughed. She folded the clipping and added it to the pile.

There was another article, the one in accent fonts, no doubt rescued from some kind of Gotham gossip rag. There was a photo with this one, too, of a young woman dressed in a smart black suit. The headline said **Rachel Dawes—heartbreak imminent for DA's main squeeze? **The text of the article was idiomatic and, what was more, inflated and absurd, so Cécile found the English slow-going. She really had no idea why the lovelorn assistant district attorney for Gotham would interest the Joker—unless he was trying to kill her? But what for? And why notify Cécile about it?

The grainy, pixelated photo of Rachel Dawes showed a young woman caught in a moment of doubt, frowning angrily into the distance. Obviously not captured at her best. Three words in the text were circled in red pen. "Why . . . so . . . serious . . ." Cécile wondered what the Joker wished to achieve. Carve a face onto Miss Dawes? Why? She wasn't an anonymous citizen to be intimidated: from the article, it looked like someone in society was watching her every move. The Joker had threatened to improve Cécile's smile—was that the connection? Ladies the Pierrot of the Underworld wished to improve by mutilation, and for apparent obscure titillation motives, known only to him?

Last in the pile of offerings was a small, cheap postcard, printed in the palette of a bygone era. The reds and oranges were sunny, the blues vivid—the 1940s artist had succeeded in making Gotham City appear an oasis of delights. Overhead the old headquarters of the Wayne Building were the words "Wish You Were Here."

Cécile flipped the postcard over to the back. It was blank. There was space for an addressee and a message, but there was nothing, not even a conspiratorial smiley face. Cécile had to quickly re-examine her feelings of disappointment. What did she expect, an endearing personal message? An address including what abandoned warehouse he was calling his base? She looked again at the words "Wish You Were Here." Did he really mean that? Or was it an over-involved joke at her expense? When was anything not a joke with him?

She sorted the clippings and fed them back into the soggy envelope, examining it a second time even though she knew there was nothing on it. Was the Joker back in Québec? She opened the front door, not expecting anything. She couldn't prevent herself from walking into the darkening street, knowing looking was like trying to find her father's ghost. The street was silent. The lamp flickered, almost a murmur, almost a sigh.

No, he'd just hired someone to pitch the package at her door. He loved to make his entrances—if he was in Trois-Rivières, he would make sure she knew. Something would be on fire, or something would be broken. Then why bother? What was he trying to say? To taunt her? He must know that she'd taken the American money, he must know that he had that on her now. Was that why he'd sent her a cosy package? Or was he really trying to lure her to Gotham?

* * *

Cécile was nineteen and standing in front of a full-length mirror in the fitting room. Her father was busily tacking traces to take cuffs and hems up on the mannequin, a muted blue suit with a gold tie. It was only a Montréal businessman, but for all his self-importance, he could have been the Prime Minister. But he wasn't especially interested in his suit. He was standing behind Cécile, forcing her gaze into the mirror and the heel of his hand against her thigh. She tried to twist her head back to call her father, though the way he guiltily ducked his head told her he knew. She closed her eyes in disgust. She was going to bite the insides of her cheeks until they bled, but she wasn't going to disrupt her father's business. Oh, no. She was too much of a good girl for that.

The businessman—LaRoc—had just moved his hand to her lower back when the door to the fitting room slammed open. Cécile, not prone to jumpiness, dodged out of the way and spread herself against the wall. LaRoc cursed colorfully in patois, and Blandine turned grey. Cécile straightened up. The Joker was shuffling a new deck of cards, flitting them in and out between his purple gloves with dizzying speed. His entirely nonchalant posture showed him to be completely involved in the shuffling of the deck, as it were the only thing of interest to him in the whole room. But his brown eyes kept betraying the craziness of his makeup job, kept straying to LaRoc with contempt and rage.

"Anyone wanna see a party trick?" he asked loudly.

"Who is this clown?" asked LaRoc in French, thinking he was witty.

The Joker cocked his head in the direction of the businessman, his tongue darting out of his mouth, but said nothing and made no other indication he'd even heard.

Blandine got off his knees at the mannequin and came to somewhat mincingly shake the Joker's hand. "Am I . . . _inter-_rupting anything?"

LaRoc was tall and broad, so marching up to the somewhat hunched and frayed-looking creature, he made quite a spectacle. "Actually, yes. I am not sure what you are doing here, but this was _my _private fitting." This was spoken in excellent English, without a trace of an accent.

The Joker grinned and looked at Cécile. "I think I almost got the gist of the frog's retort, Marie-Cécile." He backpedalled away from LaRoc, holding out the sides of his purple coat so that the stunning yellow-orange lining gleamed in the light. There were other things gleaming, too, and Cécile was never quite sure if the Joker had meant to expose the workmanship of the coat or make bald the threat. "As you can see, Mawn-sewer, my reasons for being here are just as transparent as your own." He sniffed and looked at Cécile again. This time LaRoc looked, too.

"Blandine, am I to understand this man is a . . . client of yours?"

"No, you don't wanna do that," said the Joker, with his overly nasal accent. He tried to lean in confidentially to LaRoc, who pulled away in barely concealed disgust. "The tailor is sadly mute. The daughter gets all upset if you make a big deal out of it." LaRoc frowned at Cécile, who was studying the carpet with feverish intensity, unable to lift her eyes to give LaRoc her full opinion of him. "Do you like painting froooooowns on pretty girls' faces, Mr. Montréal? Maybe your taste runs more to bruises and welts?"

LaRoc colored slightly and gave Blandine an angry, contemptuous stare. He then made a point of looking at his watch. "I seem to be late for an appointment. I will resume this later." He gave Blandine a curt nod, but spared nothing for either Cécile or the Joker. Cécile dug her high-heeled shoe into the carpet. She'd stayed silent for nothing: if they'd lost LaRoc's patronage due to the Joker's interference, there wasn't any reason she shouldn't have made him pay for every slimy advance and stolen touch.

The Joker was standing between Cécile and Blandine and making a great show of awkwardness, scratching at his greasy scalp with a self-conscious glove. "Oooh. He didn't have a very good sense of humor, did he?" He shuffled the cards one last time and then slammed them down on the nearest table. "The suit is ready, isn't it?" He showed his yellowed teeth. "I hate disappointment."

Blandine looked at Cécile and snapped his fingers. Cécile chewed her lip. "Fine, then, I'll go fetch it." As she moved toward the door, the Joker caught her arm. She shrank back against the wall, looking again to her father for protection and again not receiving it. The Joker picked the topmost card off the discarded deck and held it up against her cheek. "I feel really discriminated against."

Cécile laughed incredulously. "What?"

The Joker made a false face of regret. "You must have stayed with Mr. Montréal to help measure the cut of his coat and the turn-ups of his trousers. And yet you're always running away when I'm here for fittings. One has to wonder at your taste, Marie-Cécile."

He dropped the card, then, and it floated to Cécile's feet. It wasn't the joker card, like she was expecting, but the queen of hearts. She pushed past him with a deep breath. "And don't forget the hair dye," he cackled behind her.

* * *

Cécile knew that Luc had had nothing to do with the clippings. But something perverse in her wanted a co-conspirator in what had been bestowed on her doorstep. "Did you drop off my package, Luc?" she asked in a voice so charged Luc sat up, more used to her tones of indifference.

"What package?" He was playing some online game on her computer, listening to her, listening to the game's sound effects, sipping a glass of wine.

"It must have been hand-delivered," Cécile went on mysteriously. "It didn't have any address on it."

"Well, it wasn't me."

Cécile masked her annoyance; he wasn't interested in playing along. She dumped the soggy parcel on his lap. He muttered in disgust, then was forced to empty the clippings. "What does this mean, Cécile?"

"Remember," she said, unusually coy, "when you said about—"

Luc sighed as he began reading the articles. "I see. I see who it is. This is from Gotham."

"Evidently," she said with more venom than she meant.

"From the place you want to go to design school in. From your—from the Joker."

"So it would appear."

"I see," said Luc. "So you won't go beyond an innocent peck with me, but for this guy you'll go to Gotham."

Cécile's face turned sour, and Luc looked away, retreating into his computer game. "That has nothing to do with it. I've applied other places than Gotham anyway." Luc nodded slowly. "I should be really angry with you," Cécile went on, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I didn't ask for anyone to send me a package—I don't even know that it was from him."

"Oh, it was from him."

"Okay, so? I can't control what crazy people dressed like clowns do. He tried to burn my face with a cigarette, Luc, did I tell you that?"

Luc ruffled though his hair. "Yes, you did."

"It wasn't fun, you know? I didn't get off on it." She shrugged. She waited for him to touch her. He always touched her after her outbursts; she shrugged off physical contact, but he always leapt to supply her with it. She'd grown used to refusing or indifferently giving in. When he didn't offer it . . . "He always said horrible things about my father."

"Yes," said Luc, clearing his throat. "But maybe they were true."

Cécile resisted the urge to slap him. Her fingers grew taut, then relaxed. "I know you don't speak to your parents anymore—"

"It has nothing to do with my parents, Cécile, I just want you to think about your father's culpability. He was human. We're all human."

Cécile cocked her head. "You never told me what you fell out over, you and your parents. Was it the piercings? I don't—"

"It's just like you," he said bitterly, "to change the subject. When _you _don't want to talk about something, it's 'back off,' but when I—"

"Maybe you're right," she sighed.

"What? You really mean that?"

She touched his shoulder. "I'm going to go to the University where I get accepted."

"Yes, okay." He sighed. "It's your life."

Cécile took Luc's arm. It _was_ her life. She'd been seeing things through a haze for so long. She pulled him to her, got on her knees, leaned over, kissed him. She didn't want to say that she'd like it if Luc came with her. She groped her way through the dark, winding shadows, passing the cobwebs of regret and all the time lost. In this she valued Luc's simplicity, the youth in his demands. She forgot the silence of the house, the house where her father had died. She forgot the hand-delivered package and the snow turning to rain outside.

Luc left her bedroom in the morning not because he wanted to, she knew, but because he knew that's what she expected. He was the cuddling type, despite all the piercings—_that _had been interesting, she hadn't quite known how not to get entangled—the posturing. His youth, his callow sweetness, it betrayed his outward outlandishness every time. It was quite the opposite with the Joker, Cécile thought. _He_ was rotten inward and out.

She could start the summer session of her two-year degree at the Waterman Institute of Art and Design, if she wanted, the letter on heavy cotton-weave paper, signed in fountain ink, told her. A separate letter giving her all the financial aid she'd asked for came later. It was all like clockwork, and even if she had sincerely wanted to stay in Trois-Rivières, such a deal couldn't be ignored by anyone with sanity.

Cécile never allowed herself to get excited over anything. She mistook the feeling of intensity and anxiety in her stomach for sickness and laid off the cigarettes for a day. She was lazy and a coward, and she dreaded telling Luc, if she could really claim to ever feel dread. In the end she just handed him the letter and battled with the sensation of tears. What was she afraid of? "Okay," he said. "You're going?"

She sighed. A real smile. _Why . . . so . . . serious? _"Yes. I'm going."

Luc clicked the log out on Windows. He rubbed his tongue over his lip piercing, causing Cécile to feel strange, elated, tainted. "Then I'm going too."

"Don't be ridiculous!" Cécile sputtered.

"You don't want me to go?"

"You're just going to quit your job?"

"Cécile, it's _Gotham_. My English is good. I'll find a job."

She threw up her hands. "You're really going to follow me? Where will you live? Oh, you stupid boy—"

"Does that really matter? Look, you can't really stop me—even if we have to take separate trains, I'm going." His voice grew small. "I don't want to be where you aren't, Cécile."

She was baffled and strangely touched. He would never admit to loving her if she didn't say it first. They had been "going out" for several months, but she'd never imagined—that he could feel so deeply—or . . . Maybe he was just bored, she thought. Maybe his life was hanging on a thread in Trois-Rivières, too, and this was the impetus to break it. Chaos, she thought. A dose of the unexpected. Tipping the balance. Yes, perhaps this was the best thing to ever have happened to Luc. And when the feeling had cooled, when he had realized how boring, how manipulative and selfish, grey, "asthmatic" she really was, he would have something to fall back on. He could move on.

"The semester doesn't start for a few weeks," she said, troubling to keep her voice even. "We have some time to pack. You can give your two weeks' notice."

Luc grinned. "You try not to be sweet, Cécile, but I've got news for you—"

"I'm a regular _choux-choux, n'est-ce pas?_"

**A/N: **"Choux choux" literally means cabbage but is a term of endearment in French-speaking locales. Don't ask me why.


	6. Chapter 6

VI.

"So what's the story?" In the warehouse hideout, the kid with the silver teeth was leaning over a laptop screen swathed in porn.

"Whaddya mean?" asked the older, sad-faced man picking at his fingernails.

The kid gestured to his mouth. "The face. You know."

"And the general craziness?" asked the older man. "Not our business."

"But you've gotta be curious, Hector."

"Sure I am," said Hector, chewing on a toothpick, then using it to brush back his cuticles. "But curiosity gets you dead."

"What's his plan?" The kid had clicked the window of porn off and closed the laptop, smoothing his sweaty palms along his brand-new jeans.

"Weren't you paying attention earlier?" asked Hector. "Mob banks. First hit of several, like he said."

"Yeah, I _know," _said the kid, reaching into his jeans pocket for cigarette paper and his tobacco. "But, I mean, after that. How far is he going to take this?"

Hector rubbed his stubbly chin, watched the kid roll a cigarette, carefully nudging the filter into place. "As far as he can. Wouldn't you?"

"But he's gotta have friends to do that," said the kid, neatly licking the cigarette paper and sealing it in its cylindrical shape. "And a guy like him . . ."

Hector nudged the kid in the chest. "What's _your _plan?"

"Seriously, though," said Hector, "if he catches us in here . . ."

"He won't," said the kid. "Relax, old man."

"Who you callin' old man?" asked Hector, chewing his toothpick until it disintegrated into splits of wood. The kid had the rolled cigarette limply in his lower jaw, but he hadn't lit it. They flicked on the overhead bulb in the Joker's room. There was a bed that looked like it hadn't ever been slept in, neat, crisp, but somehow seamy, off-putting. There were stacks of books and blueprints and magazines.

"Check it out," said the kid, wandering over to a discarded shop window dummy, brown and battered, wearing a replica of the massive purple coat they had learned was part and parcel of the Joker's persona. "Creepy shit," said the kid. Hector moved over to the coat cautiously. It looked old and badly worn out, with cuts and gashes in the material that Hector could, in spite of himself, see had been expensive and well-made once.

"Huh," he said to himself, digging through his pockets for bubble gum. He gently pulled the left lapel away from the dummy and found something pinned against the wood. He warily peered closer. It was a card from a deck, the queen of hearts, stabbed into the breast of the dummy. He shuddered. "Watch out, there might be booby traps."

"Who's this?" asked the kid, picking up anonymous, darkroom developed black and white prints. They had the same face over and over, a woman's face. "I know her."

"Yeah, some goody-two shoes from Metro Court," said Hector disinterestedly, his attention caught by another pile of photographs, shaky and unresolved, with no clear target. Amongst them was a newspaper clipping, possibly an obituary, but it was in French. He squinted at it, employed the Spanish his Puerto Rican _abuela _had taught him, and failed. Too much effort. He needed coffee, not bubble gum.

"You think he wants to off her? Is that the grand plan?"

"Kid, who can tell?"

"I've got it," said the kid, giggling, the acne on his face flushed red. "Do her, _then _off her. She's not a bad-looking—"

"Okay, cut it out, Casanova," said Hector. "The mental pictures I'm getting ain't pretty."

The kid shrugged, put down the photos, and moved on. "Ohhh, no way," he said, pulling back a curtain. "Obsessive much?" Hector looked behind the curtain. The white wall behind was covered with scrawls in blue Bic ink, in black stuff that could be makeup, in crayon, and the mirror beside it—covered with swirls of white stuff, maybe shaving cream. Writing, diagrams, patterns, codes, drawn and redrawn. Hector crossed himself involuntarily. In the middle of the wall was a huge red smudge, in the shape of a smile. "Jackpot," giggled the kid. "This is what we came here for! To be one step ahead! That way, if we're next in line to get axed, we'll know and we can run with the cash!"

"I admire the initiative, guys," said the Joker, pulling back the curtain and rounding on them, "but you should have been a bit quieter." The kid wasted no time, scooping his handgun from his jeans pocket. But the Joker was too quick, grabbing him by the hair and jerking his head back. The gun dropped to the floor. There was a sickening crack.

Hector pressed himself against the wall. "_Díos mio_," he said. "You broke his nose."

"Observant," said the Joker, smirking, purple gloves running red with blood as the kid whined in protest. "Have you ever heard of the Marquis de Sade?"

"Yeah, I heard of him," Hector said, balancing on his toes, ready to spring to the kid's defense if he saw an opening.

"When they took away his paper, he got out the old razor blade, and wrote all over his bed sheets in blood. So you see, Hector, a restless, planning mind's got to find somewhere to go." There was another sickening crack as the kid fell limply to the floor.

Hector rubbed his thinning hair, gulping. "Sheee-it. I didn't even know his name. I just called him the kid."

"Ah, reckless youth," said the Joker mockingly. "Now _get out._"

* * *

Cécile made her notes in a plain, lined notebook on one corner of her desk, her sketches in a sketchbook of archival paper she kept balanced on her lap. She found she was smiling, chewing the cap of the pen, following the lecture with ease and eager to get to the sewing machine she'd set up in the apartment. The summer session at the Waterman Institute of Art and Design in downtown Gotham, in her chosen BA in Fashion Design and Development, was surprisingly packed by both those getting degrees and part-timers, interested in a taking a few classes the way the community centers offered culinary classes or conversation-level Italian.

Cécile hadn't set out to make any friends. She expected the classes to be cutthroat, like she found Gotham, with the newspapers constantly screaming headlines of muggings, assassinations, petty crime, the occasional grim torture. But these were ordinary people in the desks beside her. Lien was an exceptionally bright seventeen-year-old whose parents owned a Chinese grocery store on a street between the Narrows and the lower east side, poor people who couldn't afford to send their daughter to Pratt in New York City. Lien was going to design a whole new line of Asian-inspired wedding gowns and sell them out of her parents' store.

Tommy was six-foot-four and every inch the young Black gangster who was constantly held responsible for the degrading crime rates in the city. But Tommy belied all quick assumptions. He took the night shifts as a nursing attendant at Gotham Central Hospital. By day he pursued his part-time BA in Fashion Media to eventually overhaul the medical system's line of scrubs and patient surgery gowns. He described himself as a man with a plan. So someone like Cécile, with a noticeable Québecquois accent and nervous refuge in cigarettes even when her professors repeatedly told her not to smoke indoors, was hardly remarkable. What _was _remarkable, to her, were the bonds she was taking up within weeks of starting her college degree.

The school had arranged for a sort of off-campus family housing (once Cécile had mentioned Luc) that proved a fairly decent apartment complex. And it was there she took her friends for coffee or, more often, she had free Chinese food at Lien's family's store. Passing by Gotham Central Hospital one night, she'd even bummed a smoke off of Tommy who was standing outside in the rain on his break. For the first time in her life, Cécile had people to talk to. And the constant activity, even if she wasn't the most studious of students, kept her from missing Trois-Rivières. Most of the time.

Picking up her books and her two notebooks, Cécile followed Lien out of the Textiles for Fashion classroom and into the halls of the main building on the Waterman campus. She checked her watch. It was quarter-to-eleven. She had time for a smoke before her next class. She made for the nearest door. "Oy! Blandine!" Cécile turned around. It was Frederika—whom everyone called Fred—and Carly Ann, both headed, Cécile surmised, toward the Student Union Building for lunch. Fred was short with enormous kinks of wild black hair and round, leopard-print glasses. She was as loud and boisterous as her appearance suggested. Carly Ann was a middle-aged middle school teacher with hair the same color as Cécile's—that is, nearly colorless. Only in Gotham, Cécile thought, as she moved to join them.

"You on your way out to kill your lungs?" asked Fred, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Cécile had eventually come to realize Fred's candor was kindly meant, but she'd been quick to take it in the wrong way.

"Yes," Cécile replied without nuance.

"I'll go with you," said Carly Ann. She had the most timid voice; Cécile could never imagine her teaching a room full of screaming thirteen-year-olds. The thought practically grated on her nerves like nails on chalkboard. Fred tsked and pounded the floor with her immense platforms.

"I'll see you two crazies in the box o' doom in, like, ten?" Fred asked.

"Box o' doom" was Fred's shorthand for the SUB. Carly Ann had told Cécile that someone had told her that Fred was Mayor Garcia's illegitimate love-child with a Brazilian hairdresser, but Cécile wasn't particularly interested in gossip. She was just glad to get out into the open air and light her cigarette and Carly Ann's with a lighter she'd borrowed from Luc.

"Another scorcher," said Carly Ann, mopping her brow with a folded Kleenex. Cécile nodded. She missed some of the smells of Trois-Rivières. Downtown Gotham had a good selection of bakeries and delis and diners, most of them open at ungodly hours, but it wasn't the same as the _boulangeries _in Québec. Lunches were different. The bars were different. Eventually the novelty of English 24/7 wore out on Cécile, and she used Luc's laptop to stream the news from a Québecquois website. The people were different, too. They seemed used to fear. It was like a bad sunburn they were taking weeks to grow out of. But this summer was different. People seemed optimistic.

"I think I saw him last night," said Carly Ann, carefully folding her Kleenex and putting it into her purse.

"Who?"

"Batman," said Carly Ann, with relish.

Cécile hid her smile behind her hand. She liked Carly Ann well enough, even though she felt sorry for her—working nine months out of the year and then going to school during the summer for a design degree that was already three years in the making was not her idea of a good time. But Carly Ann was impressionable. There was some American expression for it, about looking something up in a dictionary, but Cécile couldn't remember what it was.

"Where?" asked Cécile, humoring her.

"Where do you think?" said Carly Ann, her timid voice made rough with the smoke and the bravado.

"You were peering into Mr. Gordon's window? I cannot say I approve," said Cécile with a smile. Carly Ann made a very big point out of the fact she lived in the same apartments as L.D. Jim Gordon, a man of some importance, Cécile gathered. The first time Carly Ann had mentioned Batman, Cécile had confessed ignorance. Until Carly Ann had pulled out a newspaper clipping lauding the caped crusader for the summer's dramatic decrease in violent crime. Cécile recognized the artist's drawing of a man in a bat-shaped silhouette with a cape and heavy boots. Her heart had skipped a few beats as she recalled her package. _Wish You Were Here . . . _Batman was the stuff of legends—but also, in Gotham, it appeared, a real person.

If Bat-spotting was a sport, Carly Ann would win the gold medal. "I wasn't peering through his window!" she snapped. "I was lookin' out my window."

"Was 'e sitting in a tree?" teased Cécile. "Or climbing up the wall?"

Before Carly Ann could reply, Cécile's cell phone buzzed as she received a text from Luc. She deftly glanced at it then deleted it and looked up at Carly Ann to continue.

* * *

Luc was painting his fingernails black. His right ear was swollen as he'd had a third piercing put in it the night before. The apartment building managed one good view that wasn't over the slums in the Narrows, that managed on occasion to give an impression, when squinting, of Montréal. Luc liked it best when it was night and Wayne Tower was lit up, when the cityscape was at its most alive and brilliant. He could sit there in the chair by the window and tune out the dripping faucet in the kitchen and Cécile's constant typing or the scritch-scratch of her pencils on her drawing board.

He hadn't lied. He'd been glad to come to Gotham with Cécile. He would have gone with her anywhere. And he had meant it when he said he was going to get a job since her scholarship, though generous, didn't pay for food. What shit this American food was, anyway. Nowhere to buy a decent loaf of bread. He'd started rolling his own cigarettes. And somehow their shit wine tasted better when he got up at 11 a.m. than it did at midnight.

Gotham did boast some good Goth clubs, he had to admit. This wasn't surprising, he reflected, wadding up a receipt and throwing it at the television, considering the city's name. Considering its unofficial mascot was a man in a Halloween costume. There were so many strange, disguised folk going around the city at any one time, there was no need to even confine Halloween to one day a year. It was happening all the time, all around them. Compared to Trois-Rivières, it was practically Paris itself, minus the catacombs.

In fact, Luc's favorite club was called Arkham, named after the legendary Asylum for the criminally insane. The club was always getting shut down as its ongoing legal battle over the name—which the _real _Arkham dubbed infringed on its rights—kept being fed through the court system. "No wonder all these crooks are always in and out of jail," Luc said to himself, flipping aimlessly through channels on the TV.

He was counting the hours until Cécile came home. But when she did, he would only count the hours again until she went to sleep and he could go out. He didn't want to see himself as deceived; his pride would hurt too much. He had expected the sporadic sex to unfreeze the ice queen's heart. He never told anyone he loved her. How could he love someone so cold? He was young and good-looking and even, by her own admission, sweet. He could have had anyone in Trois-Rivières. Here in Gotham he was adrift, and every time he tried to grab for his anchor, Cécile swam past him. She was as slippery as an eel, as uncaring.

Even when he'd tried to ask her about the scars, she hadn't reacted in the way he'd planned. She was even more distant. And what worried him most was she seemed happy. Much happier than he'd ever seen her. So there were girls in clubs he was kissing now, girls he pretended were her. She would smell their perfume when he climbed in bed after 4 a.m. and pull the covers away from him. Every morning he would get up with the same resolve to answer the e-mails regarding IT job offers, to leave downtown for the skyscrapers upon which he dreamed, as he would to confront her. To lay his love bare for her feet to tread on. But he knew and dreaded the outcome. So he would sneak a kiss when he could and watch YouTube instead of paying the bills.

He texted her. She was in lecture. He would make an effort to do a real Québecquois lunch. He would buy the table wine and the best French bread he could find and real butter instead of spread and _tarte aux pommes _for dessert, or maybe Ben and Jerry's. But she didn't reply.

When the woman came limping toward her, Cécile recoiled, as she thought she was hurt. Within seconds she realized the woman, in a smart pant suit and her dark hair piled on top of her head, had broken the high heel of one shoe and was wobbling and balancing her way toward her and Carly Ann. "Excuse me," she said.

"Are you hurt?" asked Carly Ann, rushing to stomp out her cigarette and clutching toward the young woman with the same matronly concern that belied her timidity.

"I'm fine," said the woman. "I'm just—my cell phone battery's died, and—" She stamped her foot with the broken heel. "This city, you know? I can't catch a cab, and I'm late for an important—" She looked up toward Cécile. "Could I borrow your phone, please?"

Without thinking, Cécile handed her phone over. She had a vague feeling of déjà-vu, but the young woman was much too nice-looking for Cécile to ever have encountered her at college or in the supermarket. The woman made sounds of frustration before Cécile grabbed the phone back and muttered, "Sorry, I am from Québec, it's in French."

The woman nodded and took the phone back, punching in her number and looking over her shoulder at Cécile. "Welcome to Gotham, then." The person on the other line picked up. "Harvey!" the woman exclaimed. "Yes, I'm all right, I'm just stuck here on the college campus . . ."

As Cécile let the woman's words fade, she felt uneasily aware, as if she'd just passed a doppelganger. Brows furrowed, she said to Carly Ann, "I _know _that woman."

"Don't we all?" said Carly Ann, admiringly. "That's Rachel Dawes, the assistant D.A., and that's her—" Carly Ann mouthed the word "boyfriend" without actually saying anything, "the District Attorney right now!" As Cécile recognized the sweet, girlish features and the dark hair, she felt her blood run cold.

**A/N: **Paul Dini's "Trust" in **Death and the City **was inspirational for the Joker's obsessive scrawl. Internet research for London design colleges was in order for inventing Waterman Institute of Art and Design (named after the Paris-based pen company if you must know.)


	7. Chapter 7

VII.

Luc couldn't hear the music in Arkham anymore. He'd tuned out the pulsing beat long before, his eyes and ears fixed somewhere else. He would find himself on the dance floor without being sure how he'd gotten there, a girl with black lipstick caressing his hair and some part of him warning her off, he wasn't even sure why. There was a name, Cécile, and for some reason she meant something to him . . .

Then Luc was on his knees, his head swimming. He had dreams like this, not ones flavored with Ecstasy but rather when he was just plain drunk on cheap red wine. Rooms started spinning, surfaces beneath him became porous, and he was in and out of water like some kind of trans-dimensional fish. And now there was a man standing above him. Luc exerted effort to understand what the man was saying. " . . . who is he?"

"Some Goth with a taste for X." Luc focused. There were polished black shoes and a charcoal leg of a suit trouser in front of him, and above to his right was a rumbling-voiced man, a skinhead in thin-legged jeans chewing on a toothpick. The rest of him was either obscured by darkness or lost in the haze of smoke and drugs and wine . . . "French, I think. Speaks with an accent."

"What does he do? Is he anything interesting?" Luc realized for the first time the chill emanating from the owner of this voice, the clinicalness and perverse interest masked by indifference—a bit like Cécile's voice, then, except belonging to an impossibly tall, thin man. "Skeletons rattling in any closets?"

The skinhead replied, "Well, look at him. The makeup and the piercings and shit."

The tall, thin man seemed to freeze his compatriot with a smile. "A dime a dozen. Gotham's crawling with them, and most of them are wannabes. I saw enough in the _real _Arkham." Luc peered upward, distinguished a pale, gleaming face, dark hair, frozen blue eyes behind glasses. "Still, he'll do."

The skinhead grabbed Luc by his jacket collar and dragged him into another room, this one bright enough to make him wince. There were test tubes arranged along a wall, books stacked alongside vats of chemicals. It gave off a bad smell. Luc could feel the sweat pouring off him, soaking his black t-shirt. He didn't protest. He had to admit, part of him was a little curious. What did the clinical guy want? Luc, who'd never found it necessary to inform Cécile he kissed boys as well as girls, thought that, for all his coldness, the clinician had very nice lips.

"What are you going to do?" he managed to ask. "If I'm going to be guinea pig, I might as well know what for."

"I haven't introduced myself," said the cold man. "I'm Dr. Crane. I'm glad you asked about the trial version of the drug you'll be testing for me."

"Trial version?" asked Luc weakly. "Don't I get compensation?"

The skinhead grunted, but Dr. Crane merely smiled his wintry smile as he filled a syringe with a clear liquid. "Certainly. This is a world premiere of a chemical formula upon which I have been working for months. It's a prestigious position you're in, Mr. . . .?"

Luc was barely able to get his name out before Skinhead held him and Crane jabbed him with the syringe. Then he felt violently ill. He was allowed to curl up on the floor of the laboratory, the faint sound of the thrumming metal music keeping him awake as it pulsed through the walls. When he looked up, he was surprised to see Crane peering down at him with a wicked smile, hand poised over a notebook. Waiting. Studying. "S-s-s-sick bastard," Luc muttered into the carpet, though he couldn't help smiling. "What's it supposed to do?" asked the skinhead. "Upper or downer?"

"Neither," said Crane, wiping the steam off his glasses. "It's something I've been developing for my overseas clients. A specific admixture they've asked me to create." The skinhead made an impatient sound as Luc began to groan. "I don't suppose you _read_? It's something of a chemical version of _verita serum._"

"What the hell . . .?"

"It's from _Harry Potter,_" said Crane with infinite disdain. "I had a lot of books to get through in solitary." He was prevented from elaborating when Luc dove face forward toward the carpet. Then there were tears streaming down his cheeks of their own accord. The words were bubbling up from some secret place, and he couldn't make them stop. He knew in some distant part of his brain that it was the chemical injection that had caused him to loose his torrent of confession. He forced his hands over his mouth, the sweat streaming down through his hair, mixing with his tears and spit, but Skinhead grabbed him then and clamped his hands away from his mouth. So he went on.

This wasn't how he had envisioned coming clean to the world about his complicated, frustrated feelings for Cécile and the subsequent times he'd been unfaithful to her. His suspicions about her father and where she'd gotten her windfall cash flow and the curious package she'd received back on rue St. Denis. But as he drifted off into exhausted sleep, his dehydration deemed critical by Crane but not deadly, he did feel absolution. Crane and the skinhead might not be a priest in the confessional, but surely the effects of the drug could help him to erase the guilt and the shame and the rush of stupidity?

"Interesting," said Crane, taking off his glasses.

* * *

Cécile had found Luc on the front steps to the apartment complex when she'd gone out in the morning to buy cigarettes. He was in same recumbent, unfeeling position as a black bag of garbage. He didn't respond to her as she tried to drag him up to the elevator, and even in the heart of hearts that seldom felt panic, she considered phoning her friends at Waterman. "I'm taking you to the hospital," she said breathlessly, irritated that she'd allowed his entropy to reach this point. The uppermost question in her mind was how she would pay for Luc's treatment, how she would have to miss afternoon classes to stay by his side in the emergency room all day.

Luc pushed her away from him. "Just get me upstairs," he slurred. "I need water." Cécile did as she was told, helping Luc into the elevator and getting him glass after glass of water from the tap once he was sprawled on the couch in their apartment.

"Are you sure you won't make yourself sick?" she said in rapid _patois. _

"It's what he said to do," Luc panted.

"Who?"

Luc rubbed his eyes, smearing the mascara and eyeliner. Cécile could tell he'd been through hell, but had he crawled to their apartment himself? Had someone dumped him from a taxi? How long had he been downstairs with the garbage? "And you were really concerned, weren't you?" he sneered. "Didn't even try to look for me when I didn't come home."

"I called your phone," Cécile said, her voice trembling. She took a deep breath, determined to hide her own culpability and the slushy feelings of regret. "Where _is _your phone? Where have you been?" Luc began to protest. "Yes, fine. I won't be your mother. But you want me to be concerned? There, I'm concerned."

Luc leaned over and muttered into the arm of the couch, "Ice queen . . ."

"What?"

"I'm all right," said Luc. He made an effort to keep his voice level, and smearing his makeup, he made sure Cécile couldn't see the tear tread marks down his cheeks. "Do we have bread?" Cécile nodded to this seeming non-sequitur. "Eggs?" Yes. "Mushrooms?" Yes. "Butter?" Yes. "Okay, I make myself an omelette. What would really help me, _choux-choux_, is if you'd go out and buy me some aspirin."

Cécile stood in the door frame. Luc rarely referred to her by the pet name; he didn't dare as it normally made her angry. She studied his air of exhaustion, the deepness of despair and vulnerability. "If you're sure. Perhaps I shouldn't . . ." He waved her away with the same indifference one showed a buzzing bee. She felt her color rising. She never tolerated dismissal if she could help it. But something—guilt?—stayed her. She reached forward to take Luc's shoulders. She leaned down with the intent of kissing his lips—surprisingly, something she had not done in days. A foul smell and the slickness of sweat gave her a split-second's hesitation, which Luc misinterpreted. He jerked away. She contented herself with ruffling his hair affectionately.

"Aspirin, please."

Cécile walked quickly, her heels clacking hollowly on the pockmarked pavement. She'd promised Luc aspirin, but when she'd left the house and gotten on the bus, her ransacked purse had produced no cash. With her credit card maxed out, she made for the nearest bank. The absence of people on the sidewalk outside might have piqued her interest in other circumstances.

She punched in her PIN with determined fury, face twisting in annoyance equally meant for Luc and herself. The ATM balked at her, spitting her card back. She glanced nervously behind, expecting a line. With a sigh, she tried again. This time the machine accepted her PIN but flashed red and gold, insisting insufficient funds. With a huff of frustration, she swung open the door to the interior of the bank and clunked her way inside.

Her footsteps echoed as she stopped dead. _Of all the banks,_ she thought. _Of all the days . . ._ She was wrested to the floor and to her knees before she had a chance to take a step backward. She wasn't really aware of what the man pressing her against the floor was saying. For a moment, her mind refused to process English. There was a large gun gnawing into the side of her temple, and the man, dressed in shabby black with oversized army surplus combat boots, was shouting hard-edged words at her. But as to what he might have sounded like, what he might have said, she had no clue. Her knees were slick with sweat from the heat outside, and slid on the checker-patterned floor. If the command had been to offer up the contents of her purse, she would have done so, with the same dreamy indifference.

The bank tellers, some distance across the room opposite her, were giving up bags of green dollars, their frightened, hysterical faces contrasting with the curious lack she herself felt. It wasn't until the bags were being filled that she realized the bank robbers, variously dressed in black and lacking a colorful uniform, were wearing cheap clown masks. This observation niggled at her for some time, which she was free to contemplate as the man who had bruised her face with the snout of his gun had wandered off. Her knees were still oozing sweat against the coolness of the tile.

They were _all _wearing clown masks, and again she thought of her mother and the tragic opera of the inwardly-crying clown. That's when she thought to notice that one in particular reminded her of something. Oh, he was dressed like all the others: cheap, anonymous clothes pulled from some thrift store. There was something familiar in that hunched-over posture, the tilt of the head, the messiness of the brownish-blonde hair. The thought was sharper than the blade of a knife. The gloves weren't purple, but they may as well have been. All of it was just as she had been seeing twice a year for most of her adult life. She looked up into the blotchy plastic mask. Did he recognize her? Fear made her want to look away. Perhaps if he didn't see, she would be left alone. Okay—they steal her cash card and the maxed-out credit card. There was Luc to worry about, who needed aspirin— But she didn't look away. She remembered the conspiratorial look they'd shared as LaRoc had been scrambled, had left the Blandine workshop with at least a temporary sanction on his wandering, loathsome hands.

"Take her."

Hearing his voice made her stomach curdle. She thought of the postcards and the newspaper clippings and wanted to slap herself in the face. Hair dye and playing cards, she had told Luc, almost truthfully. That's all he was to her, damned if she knew what she was to him. She knew he had robbed banks—she had taken the marked money and used it, knowingly—and now justice had returned full circle, to mete out to her what she deserved. _Penance, O Most Holy Virgin_, she thought—_I've_ _had penance enough with my father in these past few months_. _I _don't _deserve . . . _

The first clown, the one with the combat boots, had pulled her off the floor by the collar of her blouse. "You didn't say nothin' about hostages."

Cécile wasn't an expert on guns, but she surmised the one that the Joker held could do more damage than the one Combat Boots had used to bruise her face. "Change—of—plans." He tilted his head, almost at a rakish angle. "I make the plans, so I make the changes. Yes?" The last word was a growl, and Cécile took a deep breath. She remembered those gloves forcing her onto a bakery table with the intention of burning her skin with a lit cigarette. There was bruising pressure on her upper arm as Combat Boots dragged her to the door. They brought up the rear, and she was dumbly distracted from the getaway vehicle—though she could have sworn it was a cab—by Combat Boots raining the glass front of the bank with bullets from his gun. The sheets of glass came down in a torrent of ricocheting spikes, and she heard the screams from the people trapped inside.

She was forced into the backseat of the car as Combat Boots dove for the driver's seat and smashed his foot onto the accelerator. The Joker took the seat beside her and removed the clown mask. She was met with the familiar red gash of a grin. "_What _a coincidence," he said.

**A/N: **Crane—is—back! Since the release of _The Dark Knight, _I was in communication with outstanding author Blodeuedd and was delighted when she announced she wanted to write Crane for that era in the Nolan!verse. One thing I told myself from the outset of this story is that I wanted to bring in Crane somehow, and I think I've done a decent job.

The Joker's right—it is a massive coincidence. But some of the best Gothic is written on the turn of unbelievable coincidence—she tells herself. Anyway, I'm rubbish at writing robberies and masterminded crimes. I apologize in advance.


	8. Chapter 8

VIII.

Cécile was backtracking, trying to will herself to the moment she'd stepped into the bank. But it was useless, as useless as imagining what would have happened if she had not answered Duplessis' plea at the bakery. Would the harmless baker have been killed? Perhaps. Perhaps nothing would have happened. The Joker might have tried another way of vying for her attention. Like escaping from a bank robbery in a yellow taxi into midday traffic in Gotham with the wheels screeching against asphalt. She wondered idly if the police were going to catch up with them. Her attention was for the moment engaged elsewhere.

"So, boss, whadda we gonna do?" asked the accomplice in the clown mask, bulldozing his way through traffic in the front seat. "Cap the girl? Or she got some friends in high places?"

"You want to kill her, then?" asked the Joker, leering in the seat next to Cécile. She was staring at him, too shocked to say anything.

"I'm not sayin' that," said Combat Boots, ploughing through a red light and popping chewing gum under his mask. "It's just, she'll see the hideout. If we gonna keep her alive . . ."

"Ding!" said the Joker, holding up his gloved index finger. "I do believe he has a point. Fortunately, I came prepared." Cécile tried to shrink back against the seat but the swerving of the car made that impossible. He took out a thin piece of black material from the interior of his coat pocket. The coat she'd helped sew, with all the pockets . . . Being distant from what he did had made it easier. Now she couldn't look past the very purpose of the all the pockets was to store objects of destruction, with the intent to hurt, maim, even kill . . . She thought it was a necktie at first, but as it went around her face like a blindfold, she realized it had been made expressly for that purpose. There was probably a pocket just for that.

He didn't tie her hands or even try to pin her to the seat with a seatbelt. Blacking out her vision was just a new part of the game. Even though the goose pimples were bubbling at the top of her skin, her bruised cheek and sliced knee, she offered no reaction to being blindfolded. To struggle would be to antagonize him more. It was what he wanted. To be able to see her squirm while she couldn't see anything—could just feel the motion of the madly careening car, smell the caked makeup. And then there was a knife, slowing stroking against her cheek. She tried not to wince. She tried to keep herself calm. She would not act like an idiot. She would not get hysterical. She would get out of this alive. For the first time since she'd entered the bank she thought of Luc, and the absence hit her with guilt.

The knife held steady just below her right eye, as the burning cigarette had at the bakery. "So you finally got the message to come to Gotham," he said.

"I didn't come because of you," she said. "I came to get my degree at the Waterman—"

"—Institute of Art and Design," he said in a sing-song voice. She clutched at the seat as the car made a sharp turn and braced herself for the knife scraping along her cheekbone. To her surprise it disappeared—back into his pocket. He leaned over her, pressing her against the seat as the sound of a siren trailed behind them. The clown driver let fly a curse, but the Joker didn't seem to be concerned. "I know _all_ about it, Marie-Cécile," he said in a voice that was lightly scolding, vastly condescending. "I even know about Lllllllllluc."

Cécile froze. For a stricken moment she wondered if he was the one who'd put Luc into that state. She took a shuddering breath, realizing it wasn't his style at all. No, Luc had just had a bad night. It was the drugs he insisted on taking. _I should have been better to him, _she thought guiltily. She took another breath, this time deep. She tried to revive her former insouciance. Why was she so afraid of the Joker? She thrust her shoulders back. She couldn't show fear, she couldn't even afford to feel it. It was her father's fault, she thought suddenly with burning rage. He was the one who hadn't shoved this freak out the door in the first place. "Then you'll know my father is dead."

"Funny old world, isn't it?" the Joker said in a curiously neutral voice.

"Don't think I don't hold you responsible."

He laughed then, his hideously un-funny chuckle. "I feel for you, I do," he said, between affected titters. "You had that whole affection-thing pretty well hanging together for Pops. But I didn't kill him. I could tell you that _you _did—"

"You sick—"

He shoved her back against the seat. "The truth is, you're better off with him dead." She tried to protest, but her second's hesitation made him click his tongue. "Ohhh, Cécile," he murmured, taking her chin between his gloved fingers and shaking it. "You know it's true. The truth hurts, and what could I possibly gain by lying to you?" Cécile could think of some reasons as she balled a fist, but kept breathing deeply, determined to be as indifferent, as uncaring as she'd been in the bakery. "You see, the old man didn't treat you well. And I should know." She heard him licking his lips. "His tongue was cut out. So he neglected his only daughter, let her get felt up by every French goon in the city. I don't really have experience with these kinds of things, but is that good parenting?"

Cécile felt her cheeks going scarlet. "Hey," said the clown with combat boots in the front seat. "What gives?" he said. "Is it private play time while I have to be the primary target here?"

"That's exactly what it is," said the Joker, and Cécile was pretty sure she heard him cocking his gun. He turned back to her, leaning in close until she could feel a strand of lanky hair against her cheek. "I'm so glad we got this chance to talk, Cécile. I wanted to ask you what you did with the money."

Cécile gulped. She could remember the feel of them, the American dollars that had at the time been so foreign and absurdly green in her grasp, rescued off the floor beside a ravaged éclair. And he was near enough to her, she was sure, that he could feel her hesitation and guilt even if he couldn't read her thoughts. "One _could_ say that you're as baaad as me now," he purred. "I stole the money, but you took it, after that noble speech about not being tainted—" She opened her mouth to protest, but he quieted her by drumming a finger against her lips.

"Look," said Cécile as calmly as she could manage. "I don't know why you gave me the money in the first place. I used it to buy a computer, okay?"

"Hmmm, okay."

"And if I'm tainted because of it maybe it's meant to be, because I was never so 'appy as I was until yesterday." She remembered that he had given her the money after she'd mentioned her difficulties paying the bills because of her father's drinking. Had that been a shred of compassion? A slice of human feeling? "You must have given it to me for a reason."

"That's sweet, but—"

"So if you've got any feelings at all, you'll leave things the way you left them at the bakery."

He seized her by the collar. "You think I owe you something?" he snarled. "For a few conversations and some hair dye? Feelings?" he derided. "Someone's got a high opinion of herself." He let her go, then, and she held her breath, waiting for the knife to come out. "Getting that lovesick puppy to follow you around has done wonders for your self-esteem, Marie-Cécile. Frankly, it disgusts me. I wonder, though . . ." He brushed the hair away from her right ear and whispered into it. "Did you show Luc your scars?" She jumped as if she'd been pierced by the knife. "Or am I still the only one who knows about them? Come to think of it, _I _never even got to see them . . ."

Incredibly, it was Combat Boots stepping on the brakes that saved Cécile. How she would have reacted had he not braked would forever remain a mystery to her. She went flying into the front seatback, though the Joker wrapping an arm around her waist at the same time meant she was spared careening through the windshield. "Are you _trying_ to die?" he shouted at the driver.

"We're almost to the hideout," said Combat Boots in a convulsed voice. "So it ain't right to do that." Cécile shrunk back in the seat, sure any minute he would be rewarded for his compassion with a rain of bullets, or a knife in his stomach. Instead the blindfold was wrenched from her face. She adjusted to the cold light; they were in a tunnel somewhere. It was true; she could no more identify their whereabouts than she could jump out of the speeding cab.

"I think I should have you guess," said the Joker, as if completely negating the entire exchange and the near-crash in the tunnel, "who I've been hooking up with in your absence."

Cécile's head reeled. Hooking up with? He was clearly exaggerating with sarcastic, comic intent, but what was he talking about? Then she remembered the newspaper clippings. The angry-looking assistant D.A. The harried woman with the broken heel she'd seen just the day before. "Rachel Dawes," she said involuntarily.

"Right in one! I tell you, this kid is good."

"Why her?" Cécile asked, watching the blankness of the tunnel moving silently by, as if they'd fallen down a very deep rabbit-hole.

"Not jealous, are we?" He made a mocking face.

"I mean, but why? Have you even met her?"

"I don't have to," said the Joker, leaning back in the seat beside her. "It's her inherent moral goodness. She's just r-r-r-ripe for the plucking."

Cécile winced at the analogy, at the horrid slickness of his tone. She had no idea how serious he was being. Did he conceivably have some kind of misplaced passion for this woman? _Well, anything's possible,_ she thought. _But why tell me? Why send me the clipping? He thinks I'm going to be jealous? Does that excite him?_ Was she ever going to get out of the car?

"Hell," he said, "I'd go for Harrrrrrrvey Dent if I swung that way." Cécile stared at him, bemused. "Just the idea of corrupting that self-righteous—" He stopped and looked at her, his tongue snaking out of his mouth. "You're still wondering. You're always wondering, always these motions going through your brain," he said, shaking his head convulsively. "The marvellous tick-tick-tick going on in there. You're not like most of them. You're not worried if I'm going to blow off your kneecap with this Gloc or carve the driver into dog-meat. You're thinking about the package I had hand-delivered to your door. What does it mean? If it means anything at all." He moved closer to her on the seat, the purple pinstripe of his trouser leg rubbing against her bare and sweaty calf. "I can tell what else you're thinking."

"Go ahead," she said drily.

He leaned in to her ear again and said, this time in perfect French, "_Comment serait-il, lui embrasser à ce moment_?" Startled, she pulled away just as the car drove up to a dingy, unlit underground parking structure. _What would it be like, to kiss him? _The man in combat boots pulled off his clown mask and looked back at her in one fluid movement. _BLAM. _

She'd never seen anyone actually die in front of her before. At that close range, she knew he wouldn't survive. And suddenly she wasn't afraid. She'd seen the worst that the Joker could do. As she turned to him, the cab began to rock back and forth. Cécile cried out, the first time she had throughout the entire ordeal, as an enormous _THUMP _from the roof assured her someone was on top of the car.

The Joker giggled incessantly. "If that's who I think it is, I'm going to have to leave you for the moment. He's gearing up for the entr'acte before we've even gotten to the overture!" He seized the bag of money from the front seat and unlocked the door. "We'll continue our discussion later." In one motion he grabbed her hand to kiss it at the same time he riddled the roof of the car with bullets. The action left a smear of red paint across the back of her hand, like a scar or a badge of honor. Cécile recoiled as he leapt through the open door and disappeared into the shadows. Stumbling, she crawled out the door. Something huge thunked in front of her.

It was a titanic shape, a billowing body of black with two burning brown eyes issuing from somewhere in the mass. She held up an arm weakly, pointing in the direction the Joker had run. Her mouth didn't seem to work. A voice like grated ball bearings came from the man costumed in darkness. "Are you all right?"

Cécile's face ached, and she wiped her running nose on the back of her hand. "Yes," she said, making an effort to speak English. All she could think of was Luc. She knew she had neglected him and had not cared. She was responsible and could not face it. She stood firmly in her shoes. She wouldn't collapse, not in front of this Batman person.

"You're bleeding," he said. She felt at her lips for blood, but none came off. But her hand did come away red. The makeup stain the Joker had left on her hand had rubbed onto her lips. She shuddered.

* * *

The incessant barking of the Dobermans on the side of the chain-link fence were making Luc's head pound. He was half awake, half sleeping.

The face he was met with was not the cool Dr. Crane's, but a burlap sack from nightmares, carved into the shape of an effigy. "You haven't seen me in full costume, Mr. Proux," came the chilling voice from inside. "This is the Scarecrow, who, thanks to the successful testing of the _verita serum _as I've christened it, now knows all your fears and secrets."

"Which is exactly why," said Luc, "I've come to kill you."

He waited quite sincerely for the dogs to be loosed, for men with clubs and guns to descend. But there was only the pale, luminous, thin silhouette of the Scarecrow standing in front of him in the alleyway. "Why would you want to do that?" asked Crane in that saccharine psychologist's voice. "I see you've tried to go back to . . . what's her name? Cécile?" Luc grunted. "And it's only human nature to want to. I completely understand."

"She'll never love me," said Luc.

"You're very right about that," said Crane airily, "if what you confessed last night is any indication. To be quite frank, and I'm no great admirer of women, she sounds like a downright bitch." Luc snorted. Part of him was keening at the betrayal and the pain being dredged up to the surface like poison, but part of him revelled. "What you need, Proux, is a new start."

"And you can give me that, I suppose?" asked Luc sarcastically.

The Scarecrow came down the steps toward him, all angles and lines. "I'm looking to expand beyond Gotham. You could be key to hitting the market in Canada." Luc stifled a laugh. There was no trusting someone like this, insane but with the workings of a true man of genius, a psychologist with a sadistic side. But maybe he _could _get something out of it. He was certainly up for the ride. "And," said Crane, "you could help me break Batman _and _the Joker."

Luc steeled. "And why would I have any interest in either of them? Just weirdos in costumes. No offense."

"Batman's an annoyance with a penchant for the grand gesture and heroics. He put me in Arkham and then prison. So the retribution is all personal on that account, I can assure you. But the Joker's something new, and I've given him the chance to burn Gotham. While I wait."

"For what?"

"There will always be ruins from the city. If Gotham survives, I'll be in a position to benefit. And, if you are honest with yourself, you probably wouldn't mind seeing him burn along with it."

"Why's that?" asked Luc, mouth dry.

"Well, this Cécile woman," said the Scarecrow condescendingly. "She seems quite taken with him, don't you think?"

"No," said Luc hollowly.

"If we just look at the evidence," said the Scarecrow, "and I'm a scientist, that's what I do, you'll find she's cut him rather a lot of slack. If you watch the evening news, I think you may find she's even developed the Stockholm Syndrome."

"What—what do you mean?" It was one thing for Luc to attack Cécile in the abstract, but if she was really in danger—

Crane sighed, as if addressing a child. "The Stockholm Syndrome is—"

"I know what the goddamn Stockholm Syndrome is," said Luc, rubbing the piercing in his lower lip. "What happened to her?"

The Scarecrow examined the button on his suit. "If I said she was now unattainable, would that in any way alter your reaction, to my offer?"

Luc made two fists. "No."

**A/N: **Credit to Paul Dini again for "Kinda Like Family" and reminding me about the Stockholm Syndrome. I'm sorry, kind of lame for Cécile to get kidnapped, but it's the only logical way to create drama and get them together in the same room, now that Blandine's Tailor Shop is no more. I must admit some unflattering descriptions of Batman in this chapter owing to KatxValentine's Harve in **Dark Side of the Moon.**


	9. Chapter 9

IX.

"Oh my God, are you okay?" Cécile was expecting her father, or some strange phantom in black, or even Luc to be at her side when she exploded from nightmarish unconsciousness. Not Carly Ann.

She was draped over a couch in a neglected-looking apartment, the bright light from an imitation Tiffany lamp blaring against her eyeballs. She tried to sit up, prevented more by Carly Ann than her own swimming head. Who was it needed aspirin? "Don't get up. Were you really saved by Batman?"

"_Quoi_?" Cécile murmured. She looked past Carly Ann to a man with dusky brown hair and a moustache with the most tired eyes she'd ever seen. His face was familiar though foreign, and behind him a dark-haired, motherly woman with the same air of fatigue.

"Oh, don't mind my manners," said Carly Ann. "Cécile, this is Mr. and Mrs. Gordon. This is my friend Cécile Blandine, we have classes together." Carly Ann raised a warm wash rag to Cécile's mouth. "What happened to your face?"

"It's not—" Cécile rudely pushed away Carly Ann and sat up, eyes narrowed, at Gordon. "Did Batman—?"

"You're very lucky, Miss Blandine," said Gordon, with a kindness Cécile could tell was not feigned.

"I don't remember . . ." Gordon nodded, as did Mrs. Gordon, and they were gone.

"It's just shock," Carly Ann soothed. "You need to sit down and rest . . ." Cécile waved her impatiently away, annoyed that Gordon was already leaving. She must have collapsed at the warehouse site? Had Batman driven—or flown?—her to Gordon's? Why not her own apartment? Her skin crawled. Do-gooder Batman might be, but carrying her around while she was passed out was something even the Joker hadn't done.

"I'm sorry," she said, grabbing weakly for her bag. "I've got to get home."

"I really think you should sit down. Mr. Gordon said that—"

Cécile clutched at her temple, muttering curses in French under her breath. "It's Luc. I've got to make sure he's all right." The simplicity of the statement stunned her. There it was, as bold as could be: she did care about him. It gave her courage and warmth, and she couldn't wait to tell him. Her indifference was a combination of many things, she thought, going through the motions and giving her fare on the bus even as Carly Ann ran after her, pleading with her not to go. But the indifference of a lifetime _could _be sloughed away. She could redeem herself to Luc.

The elevator was broken when she got to the apartment complex, and it was almost dark. She had no idea how long she'd been in the getaway taxi or indeed how long she'd been out in Batman's clutches. She took the stairs, heart pounding with every level she breached. "Luc!" she cried out to the darkness of their apartment. But no one answered.

* * *

"Glass of wine? It's the least I can do."

Cécile felt the same wintry indifference creep up on her that had preserved her her entire life. She balanced on the edge of the sofa in Rachel Dawes' living room with caution, as if something much worse than her day already could befall her. She acceded to wine with a fidgety nod. She was balling her fists, unable to meet the attorney's eyes. What had she come to tell her? She could scarcely say.

Rachel, who was in another smart suit, this time with a dark maroon skirt in silk matching a fancy, elaborately-collared blouse of ivory, handed Cécile the wine and put her own on a coaster. It was a good red, Cécile had to concede. Rachel sat down on the sofa beside her, smiling that soft, dimpled smile of kindness and belief in the best in people. In a way, Cécile could understand the Joker's derision. "So," she said, "do you have any idea where your boyfriend could have gone?"

_My boyfriend. _No one, not Cécile, not even Luc, had ever said "boyfriend." She had introduced him to people just as "Luc." The hollowness of her own heart hurt her, enraged her that it hurt. She squeezed the stem of the wine glass as hard as she possibly could. "N-no," she muttered. "There was no note. He didn't know anyone in Gotham."

"But surely he had some work friends? Maybe he's staying with them?"

Cécile knew she was being kind because it was in her nature. " 'E didn't work," she explained. " 'E went out at night to clubs. But he would have told me." She shuddered. Anyone else would have snapped at her that it was her own fault, that she should have been less self-absorbed. Not this Rachel person.

"Wow," said Rachel. "To have your boyfriend disappear the day after you're put in a terrifying hostage situation—it's gotta make you real glad you moved to Gotham."

Cécile attempted a smile—she was referring to when they had met earlier on campus. "I'm okay," she whispered.

"That's good, because we're going to need you to make a statement so the police can catch the guys who did this," said Rachel.

Cécile swallowed her wine, lips barely moving. "Do I have to?" she asked, voice brittle. "I was blindfolded the whole time." She had decided that this was the line she would take, the lie she would tell, in order to preserve her father's memory, the estate, her sanity, her existence. If she gave a blow-by-blow account of what _really _happened in the car—and with the only other witness conveniently dead—she would have to look into the pit. In her own mind, she would be vile, and in the eyes of the law, her activities, and her father's, would be questionable at the very least. Vile, for having let things get this far. And viler still, for the tiny sliver of her that wanted him to carry on with what he'd threatened to do. But she couldn't let Rachel Dawes, who was the Joker's intended plaything for some reason, walk into the situation unawares. That was why she was ostensibly in the attorney's apartment.

"That _is _why you came to see me, isn't it?"

"To be honest," said Cécile, taking a huge gulp of wine, "I didn't think you'd even let me in. You don't know me from anyone off the street."

"Well, you let me use your cell phone without knowing who I was, you're a friend of Gordon's, I think you're okay," said Rachel cheerfully, kicking off her high heels.

"I don't really know Gordon," Cécile said. "He just said, since I wasn't being 'cooperative' with the investigation, that I should speak to you first." Before Rachel could take up this line of reasoning further, Cécile glanced over at a framed photograph on the coffee table. She recognized it as Harvey Dent. She remembered that newspaper clipping as if the soggy envelope were in her lap at that moment.

"Hey, don't get any ideas," said Rachel, picking up the frame and holding it at arm's length. "One look at your French sophistication, and it's goodbye Gotham Girl Friday from Harvey Dent!"

"You flatter me," said Cécile, uneasy at how to take the compliment. No one had ever claimed she was pretty. She bit her lip, hard. "You must love him a lot."

Rachel stared at her, taken aback. "Yes, but it isn't always easy." She replaced the frame. "You must know that, with Luc." Cécile felt pale, transparent, used up. She nodded quickly and put down her empty glass. She couldn't tell Rachel she was in danger without revealing everything. She'd have to figure out some other way to warn her. "Look," said Rachel. "I don't normally do this, but . . . There's a fundraiser for Harvey's campaign. It's an invitation-only event, put on by my friend Bruce Wayne. You have heard of Bruce Wayne in Canada?"

"Of course."

"Well, why don't you come? Luc will let you know what he's doing very soon, I'm sure, and maybe by then you'll feel up to giving us a statement about your . . . experience?" Cécile nodded. Could Rachel Dawes actually be this nice? Or did she, like everyone else, have an ulterior motive? What was she hiding behind her sighs? She loved Harvey Dent, that was clear, but in her warmth and winning ways, there was melancholy, too. There was a schoolgirlish optimism that grated on Cécile's nerves and, guiltily, she empathized with the Joker's feelings on that point. But that was no reason to allow Rachel to be exposed to danger. She would tell her, and if that meant she was going to be locked up, well, that she could handle. She would leave her father and Luc out of it.

* * *

"Just remember, they don't allow smoking indoors," said Rachel, as she, Cécile, and Harvey Dent pulled up at Bruce Wayne's penthouse. Cécile wanted to stay in the car, to look up at the glowing glory of parties to which she had never been invited. Now she understood how Luc could spend so much of his time staring out the window at Gotham by moonlight. There was something about it, in its sordidness, its unearthliness . . .

"Believe me, Cécile," said Harvey, pulling at his collar as if it were a hangman's noose, "if taking up smoking would get me out of this tonight, I'd be right beside you on the balcony." Cécile smiled because it was the polite thing to do. "Besides, Bruce Wayne is far too fastidious—"

As Harvey helped Rachel out of the car, she slapped him playfully on the shoulder. "This is your _host_, Harvey, be nice." Dent took Cécile's hand and helped her out. She had found out in the few minutes during which she'd been introduced to Gotham's "White Knight" that he was everything Carly Ann had described him as, every inch a hero, brave, humorous, intelligent, tenacious. But she could tell almost immediately that he didn't like her. He cracked the jokes because it was his nature, just as Rachel Dawes' nature was to radiate trust and goodness. But she hoped the evening would present an opportunity to get Rachel away from Harvey, so she could confess and keep the saccharine attorney from harm.

Rachel was stunning, sophisticated yet demure in her gown, its dark green layers looking almost black, her hair coiffed impeccably, and though Dent claimed to be uncomfortable in his "monkey suit," Cécile could see he fitted it out like a dream. She wistfully wondered what Luc would think. With his piercings he would make an unlikely debut, but she much would have preferred his arm to Dent's. Rachel assured her that the missing persons unit of G.C.P.D. was searching for Luc. Cécile knew, if he were still alive, he would show up when he wanted to. She must manage herself when he did, so that she didn't hurt him. She was so bad with hurting the people she loved.

"Cécile Blandine, may I introduce my best friend, Bruce Wayne?" Their host was, if possible, even more handsome than Harvey Dent. He murmured _enchanté _over her hand as he kissed it, then forgot about her in light of his friends. She didn't blame him. She was a nobody. In purple and silver tulle, she hadn't been trying to win any beauty contests. The other Cinderellas at the ball were in pastels and jungle colors, peering down their noses at a woman they didn't know. Threatened, Cécile thought. She studied their gowns, knew which ones had come off the racks in the department stores and which ones had been tailor-made. She was more interested in the gowns than the champagne, which Mr. Wayne's butler noted with a sardonic smile.

As Rachel bid her farewell and encouraged her to mingle, Cécile stood awkwardly in the foyer of the Wayne penthouse. Her hands were itching for a cigarette as she went over and over in her head what she was going to say once she got Rachel alone. She halfway made it to the balcony to smoke before turning around again. If Harvey Dent was nervous, she could hardly blame him. These were the men for whom her father had made the majority of his suits. Rich men, powerful men, with few scruples. In context, with so many beautiful women, she was relieved that no one had singled her out for attention. She couldn't have borne that in addition to the anxiety about Luc, about telling Rachel. Worrying how she might have been able to prevent the bank robbery, the death of the man in combat boots, even her father's death, if she'd just told Duplessis the truth.

Harvey Dent's voice carried from the kitchen. "You don't trust her, do you? She's holding back for a reason."

"I know, Harvey," said Rachel's honeyed yet conflicted voice. "Jim Gordon asked me to keep an eye on her, and I think everyone deserves a second chance . . ."

So. They didn't trust her, and they were right not to. Cécile seized the glass of champagne, now cold and flat, and drank it in one unladylike gulp. Rachel was in between dances, and, best friend or not, Cécile could see Bruce Wayne edging in toward the attorney. Cécile moved across the foyer into a corner to grab Rachel when she walked by. Instead, someone grabbed her.


	10. Chapter 10

X.

There was a hand over her mouth, a hand in a handkerchief, and the familiar smell of leather as well as something fragrant in the handkerchief, like strawberries. She thought for one terrible moment it was ether or poison, but as she breathed deeply, she could feel no ill effects. Two pairs of arms held her; one slapped a pair of what felt like handcuffs around her wrists. Then they let go, and she was pressed up against a human body. Her bare shoulders and calves met with warm cloth. A different set of hands was holding the handkerchief. She couldn't cry out and, backed against an alcove, within sight of the kitchens, within sight of the foyer, she couldn't kick her way out.

Then out of the shadows beside her the Joker stepped away. She tried to say something, but the gag was held tightly across her mouth. He held up a finger to his lips, clownishly, and then nodded to two guns—one jabbing into her rib cage, held by the so-far anonymous henchman, and one that he had aloft. Whatever was going to happen, she was meant to watch, and not meant to die. At least, not right away. She watched several more goons in clown masks, along with a short man in a trench coat, come through the elevator. They were all carrying guns.

Women in the foyer screamed. Cécile strained, not just to get away, but to see what was happening. Rachel had gone out on the balcony with Bruce Wayne. They had returned again, and Harvey had cut in. There had been a speech. Dent, Wayne, and Rachel had disappeared. The Joker had begun to terrorize the crowd, by the silence and scared titters and the grating sound of his voice. _I should have warned her, _Cécile thought. That's when she went limp in her attacker's grasp, because there wasn't any reason to fight. Her fears for her own skin had allowed whatever morality she possessed to be dwarfed. If Rachel died—if anyone died—it was her fault.

There was shooting. Cécile couldn't see very well through the frosted double doors that led to the foyer. There were raised voices. She squinted. Rachel was standing alone, away from the terrified crowd. The Joker was talking to her, brandishing his knife in her face. Holding her, caressing her. It was difficult to say from the distance what he wanted to do to her. Was the desire to tear her up with the knife greater than the desire to . . . well, whatever he wanted her for? Cécile felt she was watching a play, a stage play being enacted in front of her rather than reality. Rachel wasn't helpless, though. She fought back. _She's better than me, _thought Cécile. She knows what she does and doesn't want. Her vision was clear: Harvey Dent was a good man. That was why Rachel deserved him. Cécile had thought she and Luc deserved each other, because of what they were. Now, her heart sinking at her own stupidity, she saw the equality was very much a figment of her imagination. She didn't deserve _Luc._

There were more screams. A black shape skidded into the room and knocked the purple shape to the floor. It was Batman, thought Cécile, and with excellent timing. She was surprised not to see Dent or Wayne bringing up the cavalry. Where _were _they? Batman, the henchmen, and the Joker fought between the terrified party guests. But Rachel hadn't gone skidding to the floor. Cécile strained again, eager to see. There was the deafening sound of shattering glass. Rachel screamed. Cécile's blood went cold. There was the Joker's hideous laughter and a large smash. Rachel screamed again. Before Cécile could even work out the logistics that far, she was being hauled by the handcuffs back toward the staircase. Instead of taking the elevator, the henchman holding her threw her with an almighty shove into the stairwell. The gag was gone with its strange strawberry odor, but she tripped on the stair with her high-heeled shoe and tumbled for a few steps. Dazed, she was in no state to resist when the Joker's men filed past, still _rat-tat-tat_ing with their guns, going down.

The handcuffs made a convenient apparatus for dragging, she found out, as the Joker materialized out of the party and pulled her in the opposite direction—that is, _up _the stairs. She tried to scream. For a horrible few seconds, she thought she had lost all power of speech. Was this what the strange strawberry-scented material did? Robbed a person of voice? She coughed and found she could not stop coughing. He was dragging her and chuckling, and at the back of her mind she wondered if he was going to chide her for her pack-a-day habit.

"We _must _stop running into each other like this," he said with nasty buoyancy. "I'll start to think you're stalking me."

If they kept going up through the stairwell, Cécile reflected, they were going to reach the roof. She calmed the tickle in her throat long enough to gasp, "Rachel—what happened to her? Glass smashed and something hit the ground—"

"Awww," he said, kicking open a door at the top of the stairwell. "You're awfully concerned about Miss Dawes." He pushed her first through the door. She looked down with sickening fear as she stood at the edge of the building, inches away from falling. The Joker leaned past her, threw out a piece of wood panelling and made a makeshift bridge between the penthouse and the next building over. "C'mon," he shouted, pushing her ahead of him. She'd never been particularly afraid of heights, but then she'd never had to scramble across a flimsy wooden plank at a height of twenty stories.

He gave her another shove and she was in complete darkness in an alcove in the neighboring building. She scrambled to her feet, too slowly, as the Joker pulled her hands and dragged her up another stairwell. She tried a scream. It died in her throat. He pushed her through another set of doors. She was half-right. They were on the roof, but in what had once been an aviary. There were demolished pieces of glass everywhere framed in steel, a turn-of-the-century pattern, it looked like, and hastily erected over this was chicken wire. There were as many gaping holes in the netting as there were in the glass, and the open, yet enclosed feeling, uncomfortably reminded Cécile of a prison. Still, how long could they hide there? Unless his intent was to push her off the edge . . .

"How could you kill her," Cécile said coldly. "when I thought you liked her?"

He worked his jaw, as if seriously considering the question, then grabbed her arm and pulled her to the outermost edge of the aviary. He leaned over the edge to look down at the street below and brought her with him. "She was going to fall," he said, "but I knew Battsy wouldn't let it happen." Cécile looked down, conquering an un-heroic sense of vertigo, as the police cars streamed and an ambulance dashed through the traffic.

"Is that why you came up here? To be alone with Batman?"

He took his hands off her at last and roared with laughter. "Privacy was uppermost in my mind, Marie-Cécile, but I wasn't thinking about the Bat. I don't wanna marry the guy!"

"Could have fooled me," said Cécile. She was looking down, squinting to see if Rachel was badly injured. She was tempted to ask for the full story from the Joker, but couldn't bring herself to show the morbid curiosity. What if Batman hadn't been quick enough? Would the Joker have let this woman he affected an interest in to plummet to her death? What was stopping him from sending Cécile down in the same fashion? If he wasn't preening for attention from Batman, Cécile could only conclude his violence was arrogant and random, making sense only to him. Which could very well be.

Cécile looked cautiously down at her handcuffs. She'd been trying to wrest her wrists from them for some time, but they were holding. She turned and looked surreptitiously over her shoulder. The Joker was bending down, picking up a shard of glass and peering into it. Cécile winced. She couldn't imagine many things more painful than being impaled with a piece of glass on a rooftop, her body swaying and falling to the pavement. Except a Glasgow grin would be exceptionally painful, she thought, amazed at her detachment in considering such a thing. What was he _doing_? Why wasn't he trying to escape?

"Your moooom liked opera, didn't she?"

Cécile jerked sharply. Unless her father had somehow found the means of conveying this to the Joker, there was no way he could have known it from conversation. The thought of such a personal revelation being common knowledge sent sickly spikes up and down her spine. At one point she had even thought he cared for her, saw her as an equal of a sort! What had she been thinking?! She saw that he was looking into the glass like a burnished scrap of mirror. "She ever play you any _Don Giovanni?_" Cécile could hear the Overture in her head, but she said nothing. "That's how I feel about Miss Dawes—I want to corrupt her because I can—no reason—just want to." He threw the piece of glass down on the rooftop, waiting for the accompanying shatter. "It feels good to get what you want, doesn't it?"

Cécile tested the chicken wire with the pad of one shoe. Would it hold if she stepped out onto it? Rachel had her savior. Would Batman be able to catch _her_ if she fell? "Why corrupt me?" she said dully. "I'm not good like she is."

"You're barking," he said in a rush, grabbing her and pulling her back from the edge, "up the wrong tree. Surely even a dense frog like yourself can see the difference between you and Rachel Dawes." Taking the handcuffs, he spun her around and pinioned her between his body and the steel frame overlooking the edge. From where she was trapped, she could still see the ambulance, the constant stream of onlookers pushed back by barriers. That was twice in one night she'd been a spectator in what seemed a costume drama. "C'mon," he sneered. "If you're so worried about how I roughed her up, let's do some re-_enac-_ting." She heard him smack his lips. Her stomach did flips. "So you can play Rachel," he said in his sing-song, babyish voice, "and I'll play . . . oh, I know! _Me!_

"So, let me paint the scene for you. The heroic Miss Dawes has just issued me with a stern reprimand for my behavior. I pause a moment to look presentable for her—" Cécile felt his hands move from her shoulders; she imagined he was slicking back his hair. "I get a little closer to her and bring out my knife." Cécile breathed deeply as she felt the slick, sharp blade dance across her cheek. "So I say, 'I heard on TV that you're into bondage, Miss Dawes.' "

Cécile tried to jerk her head away as he nestled his chin against the side of her neck, but there was the knife on her right side and the steel bar on her left. "So she said, 'Let me go!'" Despite herself, Cécile could recognize that he was providing her with a pretty accurate imitation of Rachel's voice. "She gives a little perfunctory shove, like she doesn't want to get away but she doesn't want to admit that to herself." Playacting or not, his chest was hard against Cécile's shoulders, his hips hitched up alarmingly close to hers. "C'mon, Cécile, give us a little shove." All too aware that her final moments could be spent messing about in role-play games, Cécile was loathe to accommodate him. "I've got what's called highly-developed fourth wall awareness," he said. "Pretend we're doing this for the benefit of an audience, okay?"

Cécile gingerly tried to push him away, certain she was going to get slammed against the steel frame if she resisted too much. His chest rumbled with laughter. "Not a bad shove. Okay. So I said to her, 'Aren't you going to ask whether or not that's a knife or if I'm just happy to see you?'"

Cécile flushed. "You d-d-didn't really say that to her. You didn't really do that. You only talked to her for a few—"

"Curiously enough," he said, "she reacted just like that. I could tell she was wondering if the uncomfortable _bulge_ digging into her lower back _was_a knife, just like you are doing now. But she said, 'Whatever it is, it's going to get kneed in a second!' So I laughed, 'cause I like a girl with spirit. And then she said, 'What do you want?'

"And I said, smacking my lips as I do—" and he did—" 'I think it's fairly obvious.'" The knife had mysteriously vanished from Cécile's cheek, and he was pressing up against her, hard enough so she couldn't possibly miss his meaning. Rachel wasn't a little girl by any means—as assistant D.A. she must have maturity to transcend all the nastiness that no doubt got thrown her way. But Cécile wasn't an innocent, either. His persistence was noted, more brutal, more animal than Luc's had been, but the inspiration and the need for satisfaction was the same. Cécile shook her head. "Why, why are you doing this? You couldn't possibly have had time to say all that."

He spun her around. "I'm giving you the choice I didn't have the chance to give to her."

It was her turn to laugh, such an ugly laugh she instantly regretted it. "What choice?"

He flipped open a switchblade and held it in his hand at eye level, no more regarding it than he would a fly. "Well, for example . . . you could try to wrest this away from me, slit my throat, which you'd love dearly to do if your expression is any indication. Or . . .?"

"Or what?"

He rummaged around in his pockets with his free hand. "Key? To the handcuffs?"

"How do I get that?"

He licked the corners of his mouth. "You could persuade me." She stared. He played with the knife. "Be creative."

She turned away, pressing her forehead against the cold metal. She'd been afraid—and yet, secretly titillated—that it might come to this. She had persuaded herself to be indifferent as much as he'd persuaded himself to complete lack of empathy. But there were cracks in the best—and worst—of intentions. Her shoes sounded hollow on the rooftop stepping over the glass, and if she was really still, not only could she hear the sirens below, but that he was breathing—raggedly.

He was prepared for an attack, but not when she leaned in and kissed him. His lips were warmer, less sticky than she expected. He didn't kiss her back at first, giving her the satisfaction he was sufficiently surprised. He didn't try to hold her. She almost pulled away when his tongue entered her mouth, and she had to subdue her natural impulse to bite. He tried to tease her tongue into his mouth, at which point she balked. "Good surprise," he grinned.

"Good enough?" she asked, inhaling silently.

His eyes were glassy, dull amongst all the caked black, and a real smile was elusive. He grabbed her wrists suddenly. She was expecting him to break the bones. Instead he brought one hand to his face. She trembled, her heart thundering in her ears. He rubbed her fingertips against the scars on his mouth. He parted his lips and kissed the pads of her fingers, each in turn. She winced, wondering what part of the twisted game he was playing now. Because this was almost tender. He pulled her hand forward. "What are you doing?" she snapped.

"I promise not to bite," he said with a wicked grin. He sucked a fingertip into his mouth, then ran it against the inside of his cheek, where the scars were. She pulled messily away, wiping her hands on her skirt. "And here I was thinking this was foreplay," he said darkly.

"Only you would equate foreplay with knives."

"Now you're talkin'," he said.

She held out one hand, balled up in a fist. "Key. Now."

Dark lines melted through the caked white paint; he frowned. "That part wasn't in the script."

"What are you talking about? I did what you wanted, now give me that key and let me go."

He chortled. "So you can do what? Go back to your classes on Fashion Image and Footwear and Accessories? Your Luc-y-poo has vamoosed for the dark side, in case you didn't know."

"What nonsense are you—"

"Ask the Batman, if you get a chance. He'll tell you the whole story." She saw his hand flicker into his pocket, and he threw her the key. She caught in a split-second before the sky above her began to hum like angry bees. When she looked back to where the Joker had been standing, there were only quickly-lengthening shadows. She looked again at the sky, and saw there was a helicopter beating the air above her head. Bright lights sawed into her eyes, and she realized that G.C.P.D. had launched an aerial attack.

She screwed the key into the handcuffs and was amazed to find they opened the lock easily. From somewhere she could hear the Joker's voice. "Feel free to keep them, as a souvenir. Sorry to cut our discussion short _again—_I hope we get to pick up where we left off very soon." She spun around, rubbing the sore spots on her wrists as the helicopter dashed its eerie light across all the nearby rooftops. Where had he gone? What was _she _going to do?

**A/N: **I was faced with the same dilemma as in a chapter of my _Phantom of the Opera _story **Scars—**to kiss or not to kiss? I resisted the impulse there, but I couldn't quite here. I admit this was a Jokachel scene originally—sorry, Kendra—and I tried ever so hard to make it work. You could still take it that way, I guess—who is he lusting for more? What's performance and what's reality? Again, a bit lame, but the setting—surely Peter Petrelli's going to fly by the rooftop any minute.

My absolute favorite part of **Use Your Illusion **was the description of the Joker smelling like mint and gasoline. I couldn't come up with anything as good, so you get strawberries. But is nice, yes?


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: **I want to thank all my reviewers. I really appreciate your taking the time to read and review. Now brace yourselves. Rated M for mature (and not in a good way!)

XI.

"Rachel, I don't have time for this." Harvey was jumpy, unhappy, the lines in his face grim. Rachel knew he'd been unhappy that Bruce had locked him up during the disaster at the fundraiser, and was even less pleased to find her being treated for cuts and bruises after she'd been thrown off a twenty-story building. Harvey rubbed his tired eyes. "Between Batman and the Joker's demands, a second-rate chemist in a costume—"

Rachel held up a hand. "I know, Harvey, I know. You weren't in Gotham yet, you didn't see what Crane did to Carmine Falcone, to this city. Now that he's back at Arkham, in a straitjacket, I feel a lot safer."

A rictus grin overpowered Harvey's better judgement, and he smothered it with a hand. "You feel _safe, _Rachel?"

Rachel threw Harvey a plastic bag with a test tube inside it. "Take a look at the evidence. Crane's latest toxin. This could have had devastating results if unleashed on Gotham, Harvey. Or, as I think is the case, the rest of the world."

Harvey picked up the evidence bag and gave it a cursory inspection. "Yes, very deadly—"

Rachel got to her feet. "But I don't think this is the full extent of it. There were things he was testing in the last few weeks—we don't even know what he was doing. We've all been so distracted by this . . . Joker stuff—"

"See, you can't even say his name without wincing, Rachel!" Harvey cried.

"My point is," said Rachel, "if we question him, I'm sure we'll track down the people working for him. If we don't try, we've got no chance."

Harvey looked through the two-way glass at Dr. Crane, captured for a second time with Batman's help and confined to the very insane asylum over which he once presided supreme. He was bundled up in a straitjacket and sat, staring at the glass with unnerving stillness, cool blue eyes unshielded by glasses. All of a sudden he began humming a song out of tune. Fascinated, Harvey stopped his rant. Rachel stood, glued to the glass. "_Jean de Nivelle a un valet, _

_Jean de Nivelle a un valet._

_Il n'est pas beau, il n'est pas laid,_

_Il' n'est pas beau, il n'est pas laid _

_Il a cherché une pucelle,_

_Hé, avant, Jean de Nivelle!_

_Hé, hé, hé, avant,_

_Jean de Nivelle est triomphante . . ."_

He dissolved into shivers. "Quick, someone write that down," said Rachel. "It's French, we've got to translate it."

"It's gibberish," said Harvey. "I'm sorry, Rachel, while the Joker's on the loose, we just don't have time to play Little Orphan Annie. We have to get ready for Commissioner Loeb's funeral."

Crane looked up, appearing to have heard, and chuckled minutely to himself.

* * *

"There are three things I get asked _all_ the time." Luc froze from where he was about to cross the street and take the next right to the apartment complex he had until lately shared with Cécile. He recognized the Joker's voice at once, even though they had only met briefly before, and Luc had of course caught glimpses of Gotham's most famous criminal on TV—most recently assassinating Gordon and trying to assassinate the Mayor. He was standing in full daylight in his ridiculous costume, leaning against a flickering lamp post. If Luc didn't know any better, he'd say it was with a come-hither stare.

"One is the, uh, you know . . ." He made an expansive gesture that could mean his scars or his makeup. "Two is, who is your tailor, and I think you know the answer to that one."

"What do you want?"

The Joker rubbed his gloved hands together. "Yep. That's the third thing. Like people just can't cope with not having motivation. I don't know what it is. Like there's gotta be a _reas_-on for everything. That's why I'm constantly having to reinvent myself, come up with a better and better story for why I am the way I am."

Luc ran forward with a cry of hate and took out a gun from his jeans pocket, thrusting it into the air and pulling the trigger all at the same time as the Joker and he tumbled into a narrow alleyway. The gun went off, harmlessly diverted. The Joker grabbed Luc's wrist with one hand and held a hand-made detonator in Luc's face with his other. "What do I care about being blown up?" screamed Luc, jockeying for his gun.

"With your girlfriend preparing lunch in the apartment complex across the road? I don't think so."

The Joker grabbed the gun and smacked Luc hard across the face with it. Luc flew against the concrete, blood gushing from the piercing in his lower lip. The Joker tossed the gun onto a fire escape about twenty feet away. "Let's be honest here, Luc," he said, circling him. "You weren't cut out for this line of work. You're too smart to be a stooge, but you're too dumb to be anything more than Crane's henchboy."

"What do you know about it?" asked Luc, sullenly, rubbing his cracked jaw.

"You thought it was fun for awhile, but when Crane got tossed back into Arkham, you weren't so keen on being the guinea pig, now were you?" The Joker leaned down and rocked on his heels. "I know everything. Crane tested his truth-or-dare serum on you, then decided you'd make an excellent candidate for what, in the old days, they'd call martyrdom." The Joker leaned down and seized Luc by the t-shirt and lifted him bodily off the ground. He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out his wallet. Luc leaned against the brick wall, nonplussed. "Biological warfare, guerrilla terrorism on a micro-chemical scale, et cetera, et cetera." The Joker tossed the dollar bills out of the wallet and onto the ground, then removed the cheap photo booth prints within and gazed at them.

"Crane's a hell of a lot smarter than you give him credit for."

The Joker rolled his eyes. "Of course he is. That's why he's in there, and I'm out here."

"Not for long."

The Joker turned and held up the tiny photos. They were of Luc and Cécile in New York City before they'd reached Gotham. Taken in some mall. "The Scarecrow's got a naughty streak, too, getting you to spread the virus like a good ol' S.T.D." The Joker tsked. "No doubt just the kind of reunion with Marie-Cécile that you've been _aching _for." He brought the one shot of Cécile by herself to his lips and licked it. "And I totally get it, 'cause she tastes _really _good."

Luc got to his feet and lunged for the Joker, slamming him in the stomach. They fell into the alley, wrestling, before the Joker brought his knife up against Luc's throat. Luc froze. "But did you ever stop to consider who Scarecrow was hurting—besides you, I mean?" Luc fidgeted and cried out in pain as the Joker cut a very thin line across his throat. "The city, of course, 'cause he's got contempt for it. And Batman, because Batman considers himself protector of the city, and of course he's the one who got Ichabod locked up, yes?" Luc could only grunt in assent as the Joker cut another thin line just below the first on his throat. "And I flaaaaatter myself to think he wants revenge on me. Why? I think he's a little upset I took his pathetic crime ring away. All for the greater cause, of course. And he knew he could get to you, and through you to Cécile, and to me because your girlfriend—"

Though it tore another line in his throat, Luc kicked the Joker's ankle, hard, and doubled over, thrusting him against the wall. He scrabbled for the knife and plunged it into flesh. The Joker managed to throw him off at the same moment, so the knife only stabbed deep into his upper arm. Luc bashed the back of his head against the opposite wall and lay still, blood oozing from the front and nape of his neck. Cracking his neck, the Joker removed the knife and advanced on Luc. "Normally, I'd be a big fan of what Crane is trying to do. Throw a wrench in the works, chaos for everyone." He got down on one knee next to Luc, hefting the knife, weighing it, rubbing his gloves in his own blood. "But not now, when I'm so close to exposing who Bats really is. He's supposed to turn himself in, did you know that? So I've got a date with the city holding cell later today, which is why I'm gonna have to wrap this up."

With a savage twist, he thrust the knife into Luc's chest. He leaned close and held the dying man in his arms. "There's just one thing I wanted to ask you, Luc, before you went. And don't tell me to go to hell or anything like that. It's a simple question, and because of the situation, I'm hoping you're going to tell me the truth."

"What?" Luc managed to gurgle.

"Who was the father of Cécile's baby?"

Luc's eyes streamed as he stared up at the clown face, the curves of his red grin turned up with real blood. "And don't pretend not to know what I'm talking about. She was going to have a baby, and then she got rid of it. And don't ask me how I know, I guessed. I'm good at that." He reached down and squeezed Luc's hand. "Look, if it makes you feel better, I'll tell ya: I wanna know because I'm jealous. If you want motivation, there you go." He grinned, exposing his yellowed teeth.

Luc laughed, a grating, dying noise. "It was her father's."

The Joker became very still. "You're lying." Luc shook his head slowly. "Hmm," said the Joker. "Did she tell you this?"

"No. I guessed. I'm good at that."

**A/N: **Guhhhh. This was so hard to write. The murder is brutal, and the revelation so sickening even the Joker is taken aback. Feel free to write in the flames. But it was an awful idea for total abomination that grabbed hold of the gnome on the tricycle in my brain and wouldn't let go.

"Jean de Nivelle" is a French Renaissance song recorded by the Baltimore Consort on their album _La Rocque'n'Roll. _


	12. Chapter 12

_Penultimate chapter_

XII.

"Commissioner," Batman growled. "One more word, before you take him away."

"_You,_" whispered Gordon, looking into the dark with anxiety written plainly over his taut features. They'd had to endure _a lot _those last few days—the death of Rachel Dawes. Harvey Dent's disappearance, fall from grace, subsequent cover up, Batman taking the blame, and finally death. The Joker had been caught, but at what price? In former times, if Gordon had been collaborating with Batman, it had been looked on as a barely-acknowledged enigma. Now, they were officially on opposite sides of the fence. If anyone found out . . .

"Gordon, it's important." The snarl was enough to raise the hairs on the back of Gordon's neck.

"Two minutes."

It hadn't been difficult for anyone to leave the Joker hanging upside down from a skyscraper long, long after Batman had left him pinioned up there. The more the blood rushed to his head, the more he'd cackled, until most people were convinced these were the cries of hell itself. Still swinging back and forth, with a considerable reddish tint showing under all that make up, he was now practically silent, frowning. "My favorite nocturnal mammal," he said softly.

"There's no proof," said Batman, "but _I _know for a fact you killed Luc Proux."

The Joker attempted to clap but found it very difficult due to gravity. "Mighty deduction, detective."

"And I know what he was carrying. I can't link it to Crane, but it's enough."

The Joker grinned. "And you would have done the same. You would have killed him, too. To protect the city you love soooo much."

Batman bowed his head. "But why did you do it? I would have thought that kind of destruction would have been your bread and butter."

The Joker licked his lips. "The queen of hearts still making tarts . . . and I not making hay . . ."

Batman shook his head in disgust. " 'O I loved too much and by such and such was happiness thrown away'? You expect me to believe that?"

The Joker shrugged. "O ye of little faith!" And he laughed uproariously as Batman melted away.

* * *

Cécile had had to make the phone call to Luc's estranged parents in Montréal. She'd never spoken to them before, and in the end she began to wonder if it was the early death of her mother, the trauma endured at the hands of her father, that had made her the dysfunctional human being she was, as much as Luc's childhood had separated him from his parents irrevocably. And now he was dead.

At the death of her own father, nothing had been cut and dried. The death certificate noted the heart attack but made no mention of all the alcohol soaked up by her father's liver. He had been buried quietly, without ceremony—as he had lived his life, really—in the parish churchyard of Notre Dame des sept allegresses in Trois-Rivières. She had tried to keep the date and time a secret, otherwise she knew the churchyard would have been swarmed with old business associates of her father's, intent on sharing their crocodile tears. No one could really get close to a mute tailor unless they were willing to expend the effort.

In addition to the very real grief, there was also anger, the darkness of retribution. The neglect and the one incident of barbarity—most of it enacted under the shroud of drunkenness but not all—had given her the thin shield of indifference that was easy to pass off as a Gallic temperament, with the chain-smoking, the Québecquois vocabulary. Cécile could develop empathy for few, but her father was, conversely, one of them. If her mother hadn't died, if her brother hadn't run away, if her father hadn't stuck proudly to his self-righteous morals and run afoul of the Canadian mob, if Cécile had been more beautiful and more talented, had Trois-Rivières enveloped them like friends instead of hid them like a tree's festering sap, _maybe _things would have turned out differently. But from where did you start to unravel the thread? At her birth? At her father's birth? And his father's birth, a decorated but deranged cavalryman of the First World War?

Luc had only been twenty-seven. He'd never told her his age. She must have looked at his driver's license and read it, but certainly it never impressed her, though she always thought of him as "the boy." She was ashamed, but until the morning he had lain among the garbage on the doorstep, she had found it difficult to find any empathy for him. Like most people, he was a degree removed from herself and her own depths. When he was hurt because she was cold, she was physically unable to bring herself to react. When he couldn't find work in Gotham, she blamed him for it, even grew angry that she had allowed him to tag along. Having seen what he'd become, and that even an innocent boy with all intentions of enjoying life and doing good could descend to monstrosity, reminded her of his humanity. But it was too late.

She had the funeral in the Catholic church whose cemetery had the best view of Wayne Tower. At least that way, symbolically if nothing else, Luc could enjoy the night-time view that was really his only pleasure once they'd moved to Gotham. The priests were Irish, and her own voice sounded foreign as she made the responses in French. Luc hadn't claimed to be Catholic, but she supposed the habit was like a bad penny: it always turned up in the end. She hadn't acceded to an open casket, for obvious reasons: when she went to the morgue to identify the body, the throat was torn up and the chest wound that actually killed him was ugly. But she'd made sure, before they put him in the coffin, all of his piercings were intact—with grim humor, she thought she'd at least do him the favor of making sure all the barbells were shiny.

By then, there'd been so many photos on the news and in the papers of the Joker's victims, some of them cut up with Glasgow grins, faces painted luridly, that she was in a way grateful that the killing, though undoubtedly painful, was relatively quick and straightforward. Officially on the records, since no evidence to the contrary could be substantiated, Luc's killer was unknown, the motive being robbery since his wallet was found empty next to his body. And if Cécile had said otherwise, it would have been about as useless as declaring Jack the Ripper had done it. There were so many deaths already pinned on the Joker, and now he was caught—there wasn't much point in trying to up a lifetime sentence. This is what she told herself. Besides, Luc had already been linked up to the escaped and recaptured Dr. Jonathan Crane alias the Scarecrow—had he lived he may have had a life sentence to live up to himself, if not worse.

The report that Luc had been involved with Crane's experiments, that he'd willingly agreed to become a carrier for a biological weapon of terror, had shocked Cécile the most. When the chemicals expert had told Cécile that long exposure to exchange of fluids was the only way the chemical could be spread, Cécile had almost vomited. In the end, no one was as innocent as they appeared. Not Rachel Dawes, whose last moments had been terror-stricken, nor Harvey Dent, whose wasted face hinted at a deeper crime, nor Batman who was apparently a killer out of control, nor Luc. The only consolation, Cécile supposed, was that Crane's formula was not infallible, and once Luc had died, the poison had died with them.

She was paying her final respects in the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene. It had been a grey day, but with the sun finally washing its light over the churchyard, she'd gone out to stand by the newly-dug grave with Luc's simple epitaph. Maybe he would have wanted to be cremated, she considered for the hundredth time, reading _"This, too, shall pass_" carved onto the grey stone. She heard someone coming up behind her, and she turned. To her surprise, it was Bruce Wayne. He was dressed immaculately in a black suit with a pale blue tie, quite at odds from the jovial, boozy playboy she'd met at the fundraising party.

"What are you doing here?" she blurted.

Wayne looked up at her in surprise and removed a white and red rose from inside his coat and placed them in the cupola of a thin, elegant pillar shaped like a flame. "In memory of Dr. Thomas and Sarah Wayne," it said simply. "Oh," said Cécile. Wayne reached into his coat pocket again and removed a yellow rose and placed it at her feet, on Luc's grave. "I'm sorry for your loss," he said.

Cécile squinted into his handsome face and for the first time saw the lines, the tiredness. It reminded her of something, of someone . . . "I'm sorry for yours," she said. Rachel Dawes had been cremated and her ashes given to her family members. Cécile knew there were plans, spearheaded by Wayne, of course, to erect a public garden next to the Gotham Central Library, dedicated to both Rachel and Harvey Dent. She studied Wayne who gazed in silence at the monument to his murdered parents.

"Rachel told me a little about you," he said. "Your parents died when you were young as well."

Cécile reacted as if he had touched her. "My mother did," she admitted, surprised that there had been time or necessity for Rachel to pass this information on to her, well, "best friend." "My father died recently, heart attack."

"Hard to keep a smile on your face with all this tragedy," he said soberly, and Cécile glared at him. She was sure he'd put that bit about smiling in on purpose. She'd been wanted for questioning about her role in the Joker bank robbery, and then again when she'd disappeared onto the rooftop, but she'd thought present circumstances . . .

"Do you know who killed your parents?" she asked.

He cleared his throat. "Yes. It was a man named Joe Chill. He was put into prison, and on the day of his release I was going to put a bullet through his head, for taking away the two people who I loved most. But someone beat me to it, and in the end, redeemed me." He smiled and ruffled through his hair. "Actually, Rachel wasn't very happy with me for trying to take justice into my own hands."

"And Rachel," Cécile hazarded. "Aren't you tempted to just . . .?"

"Just what, Miss Blandine?" Cécile stared at her shoes, petrified to finish her thought. After the helicopters had surrounded the aviary, after the Joker had escaped by some means still not clear to her, she'd tried to take the easiest possible way out. She'd found a hole in the wire cage, and she'd made to jump through it. But she'd slipped on the broken glass, hit her head on the steel frame, and caused herself a week-long hospital stay from the cuts and gashes, bruises and fractures, when the aviary collapsed on her. No one could have alleged it was a suicide attempt. She claimed it was an accident, though she could have just have easily blamed the Joker. So she'd been in the hospital when Harvey Dent claimed to be the Batman, when he was driven in an armored car, during the fight between Batman and the Joker that went on all night on CNN. She'd been receiving flowers from Carly Ann and Fred when the Joker was taken into custody, when Rachel was blown up, when Harvey Dent went missing. She'd had to be evacuated with everyone else when the Joker threatened to blow up all the hospitals in the city, and she'd been recuperating with Lien's family at the Chinese grocery store when the news broke that Dent was dead, Commissioner Gordon had been kidnapped, and Batman was the perceived culprit.

"And there's still no news on Luc's killer?" asked Wayne, with a hard edge to his voice. Cécile guiltily couldn't meet his gaze. "It's always harder when you _don't _know, isn't it?" he asked.

"He killed Rachel," Cécile blurted. "The Joker did. Aren't you tempted to get revenge?"

Wayne smiled sadly. "What revenge could I possibly take that will make up for Rachel's death? What could I possibly take from him that would be an equivalent?"

"Then . . . do you forgive him?"

Bruce took a step backward, straightened his tie, looked at his watch. "My mother always told me that no matter how terrible a person was, there was never one-hundred-percent evil. And that's grounds for forgiveness. Oh yes," and Wayne laughed with an aching sort of hiccup, "she died with that belief, still. But if you can't believe that, you're no better than he is."

"And that's how you keep going?"

This time, Wayne actually stepped over and touched Cécile on the shoulder. "Don't let any of this get around, Miss Blandine. I'd hate to actually be thought anything but vapid."

"Mr. Wayne," said Cécile, gazing at the yellow rose, "is it true that you're a trustee of Arkham Asylum?"

**A/N: **The denouement is soooooooooo long. Sorry. The poem is "On Raglan Road" by Patrick Kavanagh and it's one of the greatest poems ever, so go look it up. It's been recorded by various artists to the tune of "The Dawning of the Day."


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: **Hmm, and we come to the end. I see that some of you have been less than impressed with the developments in the last few chapters, and I believe you have points. Depending on how you feel this chapter completes the story, I'm considering going back and revising a bit, with the possibility of leading into a third part—if I've got the energy and inspiration! We'll see. For now, enjoy.

XIII.

"Okay, Miss Blandine, you've got ten minutes." Cécile could tell the daytime orderly was nervous being in Block E, and not just because he was afraid of losing his job. The most dangerous, the most insane criminals were kept in Block E. And for some reason, Gotham seemed to teem with them. Not just the savage and the amoral mob bosses; they abounded in any city. But the twisted, the utterly devoid of sense, grew like moss out of Gotham's sewers. The former Dr. Jonathan Crane was kept in this wing. So was the Joker.

"If Mr. Wayne wasn't a trustee, I'd be sacked," the orderly continued.

"It's okay," Cécile said, her cool, indifferent voice more calm than she felt. "I promise to be out in ten minutes. You won't get into trouble."

"Damn right I won't," said the orderly, pulling at his collar convulsively. He unlocked the observation room door and allowed Cécile to sit down on the bare wooden chair. The window led to a two-way mirror into the Joker's cell. Cécile felt like she was at the Toronto Zoo.

Once the orderly left, still muttering to himself, Cécile looked into the cell. There was a young doctor in a white coat, Dr. Jeremiah Arkham his name badge said, which she thought was an amazing coincidence. But who was he questioning? She was about to buzz the orderly to say she'd been put in the wrong observation room when she heard the peerless chuckle. So that was _him? _She realized with a shock that sent her straight to her seat again that she'd never seen the Joker without his makeup—or without a version of the suit in purple and green.

His hair was dark blonde now, still greasy and a little longer, more unkempt. The green hair dye must have faded weeks before. The scars on the sides of his mouth were almost more obvious than they had been under the makeup. She found herself literally unable to look away. His hands without the gloves looked naked. Unconsciously she thought of Luc, who painted his fingernails black, and was somehow surprised—with a twinge of disgust at her surprise—that his weren't. Somehow wearing the massive coat had always swallowed him up, given him a grungy ability to be a hulk in the background. Only wearing the Arkham-issued uniform, which was a boring and versatile light blue, could she see just how broad his shoulders were.

"So we have no information on you at all," Dr. Arkham was saying, looking down at his notes. "No fingerprint matches, no birth certificate, no record that you exist."

"Maybe I don't exist," the Joker chuckled. "Had you ever considered that, Doc? That I'm just a figment of your imagination?"

Arkham ignored him. "Do you have a name?"

"J-O-K-E-R. It's just that simple." He sang it like the jingle for a used car dealership. It was almost unbearable to watch him smile. The scars were deeply cut into his face, painfully puffed out, as if they'd never healed correctly. She remembered that strange night on the roof of the penthouse when he'd rubbed her hands against them, when he'd sucked her fingers into his mouth. The scarring had felt impossibly thick and bumpy on the inside of his cheeks. Did they still hurt? she wondered.

The doctor cleared his throat. "Okay. We have at least sixteen narratives on record that you've provided giving anecdotal evidence for how you received those mutilations. Which one is it?"

The Joker laughed delightedly. "Oh, they're like hats, Doc—one for every occasion." He leaned over the table, his handcuffs clinking. He licked his lips, though the corresponding smacking sound wasn't quite the same. "How boring just to have one history. Making it up as you go along—_that's _a lot saner."

"Maybe it's because _you _can't even remember anymore what actually happened," Dr. Arkham countered.

The Joker frowned. Cécile realized that, even when he'd been holding her close and looking right into her eyes, the makeup had never quite done justice to his eyes. They were perfectly normal brown eyes, she could see. They almost looked . . . sad. "Hey, Doc," he said, "you got a pencil I could borrow?"

"Let's talk about the suit," said Arkham. "No labels, so it was tailor-made. Who made it, and why?"

"Speaking of the suit, I'd like to have it back, please."

"Why?"

The Joker rubbed his hands through his greasy hair. "My skin . . . itches without it! If you're trying to get your loonies to open up, take my advice and give them back their costumes. They'll be a lot calmer, much more amenable to answering your questions." He grinned, showing all of his teeth.

"I'll see what I can do. Tell me, then, about where you got it?"

"No way."

"Why not? Who are you protecting?"

"Not you, Doc, since your tailor seems to be retarded."

Cécile waited, holding her breath. Why wasn't he admitting it? It was common knowledge, at least in Québec, that he'd been Blandine's customer. If Arkham had done any research at all, he would have known this. The Joker had nothing to gain by keeping the Blandines anonymous.

"Hmmph," Arkham muttered, clearly getting frustrated. "What about the queen of hearts? Who or what is that?"

The Joker cackled uproariously. "Oh-ho, you're worse than Freud! Next you're going to be telling me I paint my face because I have an oral fixation."

Arkham looked down at his notes. "You do have an oral fixation."

"Takes one to know one, Doc."

Arkham ignored the lascivious grin and underlined something in his notes. "Queen of hearts?" he asked again.

Cécile never got to hear the Joker's response, as the orderly opened the door and ushered her out peremptorily.

* * *

"Okay," Cécile said to herself. She was standing in an alleyway behind the apartment complex with an empty trash can in front of her, a tin of gasoline at her feet, and a lighter in one hand. She placed the package into the trash can, putting in each neatly folded garment piece by piece. There were the purple pinstripe trousers, the purple and green argyle socks, the green tie, the green silk vest, the blue dress shirt, and the purple coat. They'd been FedExed to her a few days after she'd visited Arkham, after she'd bought her Greyhound bus ticket home to Trois-Rivières, having withdrawn herself from the Waterman Institute of Art and Design. The college had agreed to enact no penalty on her early withdrawal due to her "personal situation."

What had he expected her to do with them? Keep them neatly pressed in a hatbox for when he got out? Display them on a mannequin the way her father had in his workshop? Deliver them to Batman for inspection? Did he want to implicate her? She felt sure this was not the object; he wouldn't have so vigorously denied Arkham's grill for information. So she would burn them as she threatened to do the winter before.

As she tossed the coat**—**which rather revoltingly smelled of sweat, sulphur, and strawberries—something fell out of it onto the cement. She picked it up. It was a playing card, probably from one of the decks she had given him years before. It was the queen of hearts. By that time, everyone had seen the evidence from the Joker's summer of terror—the torture videos of the Batman-wannabes had gone viral on the internet, YouTube favorites before they were banned—including the calling cards that had accompanied the deaths of Judge Serillo, Commissioner Loeb, and the others. Like those, this one had a typewriter script irregularly going across its white space, over the mouth of one of the stylized queens printed on its front. "Wish you were here" it said.

THE END

**A/N: **And we've come full circle. The quotes that kicked us off have guided us through Cécile's experience of someone who's amoral, but perhaps in some way sympathetic because his mysterious past leaves us guessing what kind of trauma, if any, inspired his viciousness. **The Killing Joke **says the Joker chooses "multiple choice" histories for himself.

Dr. Jeremiah Arkham is the property of Alan Grant in his story **Madmen Across the Water. **

If you're dying for more Joker fic, I'm posting "Making It Stranger," a TDK/Doctor Who crossover, momentarily.


End file.
